
Glass __ „ . 

Book ' ^- V 

COPYRIGHT DKPOS1T 



SACERDOTAL CELIBACY 



CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



X 



; v 



x 



AN 



HISTORICAL SKETCH 



SACERDOTAL CELIBACY 



CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



BY 



/S 



HENRY C. LEA 



SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED. 



Oi) yap Qeov eari klvelv em ra irapa (pvatv. 

Athenagoiue pro Christianis Legntiv, 




v) 



■■■nnj'j 



. 



Wash 



i^!S 



BOSTON 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

New York 11 East Seventeenth Street 

(Cfa JStoersi&e $res£, <£amlirit&0£: 

1884 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by 

HENRY C. LEA, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress. All rights reserved. 



DORNAN, PRINTER. 



PREFACE, 



The following work was written several years since, simply as an 
historical study, and with little expectation of its publication. Recent 
movements in several portions of the great Christian Church seem to 
indicate, however, that a record of ascetic celibacy, as developed in 
the past, may not be without interest to those who are watching the 
tendencies of the present. 

So far as I am aware, no work of the kind exists in English 
literature, and those which have appeared in the Continental lan- 
guages are almost exclusively of a controversial character. It has 
been my aim to avoid polemics, and I have therefore sought merely 
to state facts as I have found them, without regard to their bearing 
on either side of the questions involved. As those questions have 
long been the subject of ardent disputation, it has seemed proper to 
substantiate every statement with a reference to its authority. 

The scope of the work is designedly confined to the enforced celi- 
bacy of the sacerdotal class. The vast history of monachism has 
therefore only been touched upon incidentally when it served to 
throw light upon the rise and progress of religious asceticism. The 
various celibate communities which have arisen in this country, such 
as the Dunkers and Shakers, are likewise excluded from the plan of 
the volume. These limitations occasion me less regret since the 
appearance of M. de Montalembert's "Monks of the West" and 
Mr. W. Hep worth Dixon's "New America," in which the student 
will probably find all that he may require on these subjects. 

Besides the controversial importance of the questions connected 
with Christian asceticism, it has seemed to me that a brief history 
like the present might perhaps possess interest for the general reader, 



yi PEEFACE. 

not only on account of the influence which ecclesiastical celibacy has 
exerted, directly and indirectly, on the progress of civilization, but 
also from the occasional glimpse into the interior life of past ages 
afforded in reviewing the effect upon society of the policy of the 
church as respects the relations of the sexes. The more ambitious 
historian, in detailing the intrigues of the court and the vicissitudes 
of the field, must of necessity neglect the minuter incidents which 
illustrate the habits, the morals, and the modes of thought of bygone 
generations. From such materials a monograph like this is con- 
structed, and it may not be unworthy the attention of those who 
deem that the life of nations does not consist exclusively of political 
revolutions and military achievements. 

Philadelphia, May, 1867. 



In reprinting this work such changes have been made as further 
reading and reflection have seemed to render advisable. The first 
two and the last sections have been wholly rewritten, and numerous 
additions have been made throughout the volume. To accommodate 
as far as possible the considerable amount of matter thus introduced, 
I have omitted from the footnotes all extracts which merely verified 
without illustrating the text. 

Philadelphia, December, 1883. 



CONTENTS, 



Influence of the church on modern civilization 
Effect of celibacy in moulding its destiny 



PAGE 

17 
19 



I.— ASCETICISM. 

Character of early Judaism .... 21 

Oriental and Hellenic influences ... 23 

Growth of asceticism ...... 25 

Pauline Christianity • • . . . .26 

Admission that celibacy is of post-apostolic origin 28 



II.— THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH. 



Early ascetic tendencies 
Exaggerated in the heresies 
Influence of Buddhism 
Objection to second marriages 
c. 150 " Digami " rejected from the ministry 

Application of the Levitical rule 
Growth of asceticism — self-mutilation 
Vows of virginity and their results 
c. 280 Influence of Manichseism . 

Condemnation of marriage . 
305 First injunction of celibacy, by the 

Elvira 

314 Disregarded elsewhere 



Council of 



31 
33 
34 
36 
37 
38 
40 
41 
43 
45 

50 
51 



III.— THE COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 

Growing centralization of the church . 

325 The first general council .... 

It prohibits the residence of suspected women 
The story of Paphnutius .... 

325 — 350 Married priests not as yet interfered with . 



52 
53 
53 

56 

58 



Vlll CONTENTS. 



IV.— LEGISLATION. 

A. D. PAGE 

348 — 400 Enforcement of voluntary vows 59 

Prohibition of female ministry .... 60 

362 Reaction — the Council of Gangra ... 61 

384 Celibacy adopted by the Latin church . . 64 

385 Decretal of Siricius ...... 65 



V.— ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 

Resistance to enforced asceticism ... 67 

390 Jovinian 69 

404 Vigilantius 70 

390—419 The church of Africa yields .... 73 

401 Compromise of the Cis-Alpine church ... 75 

Popular assistance in enforcing celibacy . . 77 

Effect of enforced celibacy on clerical morals . 78 

General demoralization of society ... 81 

VI.— THE EASTERN CHURCH. 

Divergence between the East and the West . . 83 

381 Compulsory celibacy unknown in the East . . 84 
400 Council of Constantinople — Antony of Ephesus — 

Synesius ....... 85 

430 First enforcement of celibacy in Tiiessaly . . 86 

Celibacy not obligatory ..... 86 

528 — 548 Legislation of Justinian 86 

680 The Quinisext in Trullo — Discipline unchanged . 88 

900 Final legislation of Leo the Philosopher . . 90 

The Nestorians — clerical marriage permitted . 91 

The Abyssinian church ..... 92 

VII.— MONACHISM. 

Buddhist model of monachism .... 94 
Apostolic order of widows . . . . .96 
Devotees in the primitive church — no vows irre- 
vocable 97 

250—285 Paul the Theb^an and St. Antony ... 97 



CONTENTS. 



IX 



A. D. 

350—400 



400 
450—458 



390—456 
532—545 



528 



590—604 



PAGE 

Increase of monachism ..... 98 

Early systems — vows not irrevocable . . . 101 

Greater strictness required of female devotees . 103 

Marriages of nuns still valid .... 104 

Conflicting legislation ..... 105 

Strictness of the Eastern church — Political neces- 
sity of controlling monachism .... 106 

Monks confined to their convents . . . 108 

Justinian renders monastic vows irrevocable . 108 

Disorders of Western monachism . . . 109 
St. Benedict of Nursia — vows not irrevocable 

under his rule ...... Ill 

Gregory I. enforces the inviolability of vows . 113 

Continued irregularities of monachism . . 115 



VIII.— THE BARBARIANS 



The Church and the Barbarians 

The Merovingian bishops . 

The Spanish Arians . 
589 — 711 Neglect of discipline in Spain 
557 — 580 State of discipline in Italy . 

Dilapidation of ecclesiastical property 
590 — 604 Reforms of Gregory the Great . 



117 
118 
120 
121 
122 
123 
123 



IX.— THE CARLOVINGIANS. 



742—755 



755 



840—912 

874 
893 



Demoralization of the VII. and VIII. centuries . 126 
Reorganizing efforts of the Carlovingians . .128 
Labors of St. Boniface ..... 131 

Resistance of the married clergy . . . 132 
Pepin-le-Bref undertakes the reform . . . 134 
Sacerdotal celibacy reestablished . . .135 

Reforms of Charlemagne and Louis-le-Debonnaire 
— Their inefficiency . . . . .135 

Increasing demoralization under the later Car- 
lovingians ....... 139 

Legal procedures prescribed by Hincmar . . 140 
Sacerdotal marriage resumed .... 142 



CONTENTS. 



X.— THE TENTH CENTURY. 

A. D. PAGE 

Barbarism of the tenth century — Debasement of 
the papacy ....... 144 

Tendency to hereditary benefices — Dilapidation of 
church property ...... 145 

938 Leo VII. vainly prohibits sacerdotal marriage . 148 

952 It is defended by St. Ulric of Augsburg . .153 
925 — 967 Unsuccessfully resisted by Ratherius of Verona 

and Atto of Vercelli 150 

Opposing influences among prelates . . . 152 
Relaxation of the canons . . . . .154 
942—1054 Three Archbishops of Rouen .... 155 
Indifference of Silvester II. .... 157 

Celibacy practically obsolete . . . .158 



XI.— SAXON ENGLAND. 

Corruption of the ancient British church . .159 
Asceticism of the Irish and Scottish churches . 160 
597 Celibacy introduced among the Saxons by St. 

Augustin ....... 161 

Disorders in the Saxon nunneries . . .163 
747, 787 Councils of Clovesho and Chelsea . . .164 

Neglect of discipline in the ninth and tenth cen- 
turies ........ 165 

964 St. Dunstan undertakes a reformation . . .166 

964—974 Energy of Edgar the Pacific .... 168 

975 Reaction after the death of Edgar . . .170 

1006 Failure of Dunstan's reforms .... 171 

1009 Council of Enham — Sacerdotal polygamy . . 172 

1032 Legislation of Cnut 173 

Sacerdotal marriage established . . . .175 



XII.— PETER DAMIANI. 

1022 Council of Pa via — Efforts to restore discipline . 178 

1031 Council of Bourges . . . . . .179 

Clerical marriage and profligacy . . . 180 

Revival of asceticism — San Giovanni Gualberto . 183 








CONTENTS. 


XI 


A. D. 




PAGE 


1046 


Henry III. undertakes the reformation of the 






church — Clement II. .... 


184 




St. Peter Damiani ...... 


185 


1049 


Leo IX 


187 




Damiani's Liber Gomorrhianus .... 


188 




Reformatory efforts of Leo — Councils of Rheims 






and Mainz ....... 


188 


1051—1053 


Attempts to reform the Italian clergy . 


189 




Failure of the Reformation .... 


190 


1058 


The Papacy independent — Damiani and Hilde- 






brand ........ 


192 


1059 


Appeal to the laity for assistance 


194 


1059 


Council of Melfi — Deposition of Bishop of Trani . 


197 


1060 


Damiani endeavors to reform the prelates . 


198 




The persecuted clergy organize resistance . 


199 


1061 




200 




He is supported by the married clergy 


201 


1063 


Renewed efforts of Alexander II. and Damiani . 


202 




Their failure ....... 


204 



XIII.— MILAN. 

Milan the centre of Manichseism . . . 207 
1045 Election of an archbishop — four disappointed com- 
petitors 209 

Marriage universal among Milanese clergy . . 210 

Landolfo and Arialdo excite the people . .211 

1056 Popular tumults — Plunder of the clergy . . 212 

1058 The Synod of Fontaneto defends the married 

priests ........ 212 

A furious civil war results . . . . .213 

1059 Damiani obtains the submission of the clergy . 213 

1061 Milan embraces the party of Cadalus . . . 215 
Death of Landolfo — Erlembaldo takes his place . 215 

1062 His success 216 

1066 Excommunication of Archbishop Guido — Mar- 

tyrdom of Arialdo . . . . . .216 

1067 Compromise and temporary truce . . . 217 
1069 Guido forced to resign — War between Gotefrido 

and Azzo for the succession . . . .218 



Xll CONTENTS. 

A. D. PAGE 

1075 Death of Erlembaldo — Tedaldo archbishop in spite 

of Gregory VII . 219 

Influence of celibacy on the struggle . . . 220 

1093—1095 Triumph of sacerdotalism 221 

Similar trouble throughout Tuscany . . . 222 



XIV.— HILDEBRAND. 

1073 Election of Gregory VII.— His character . . 223 
Necessity of celibacy to his scheme of theocratic 

supremacy ....... 225 

1074 Synod of Rome — Repetition of previous canons . 227 
Attempts to enforce them throughout Europe — 

Resistance of the clergy ..... 228 
Three bishops — Otho of Constance — Altmann of 
Passau— Siegfrid of Mainz . . . .229 
1074 Gregory appeals to the laity .... 232 
Resultant persecution of the clergy . . . 234 
1077 Violent resistance of the married clergy . . 236 
Political complications ..... 237 
1085 Papalists and Imperialists both condemn sacer- 
dotal marriage ...... 239 



XV.— CENTRAL EUROPE. 

Depression of the Catholic party — Sacerdotal mar- 
riage connived at . . . . 241 
1089 Urban II. renews the persecution . . . 242 
1094 Contumacy of the German priesthood . . . 243 
1105 Deposition of Henry IV. — Germany restored to 

Catholic unity 244 

1118 — 1175 Sacerdotal marriage nevertheless common . . 245 

1092—1257 First introduction of celibacy in Hungary . . 248 
1197—1279 Introduction of celibacy in Poland . . .251 

1213—1248 Disregard of the canons in Sweden . . . 252 

1117—1266 Their enforcement in Denmark .... 253 

1219—1271 Their neglect in Friesland 254 



CONTENTS. 



Xlll 



A. D. 

1056—1064 
1074—1078 
1080 



1076—1094 



1095 



1119 



1212 



XVI.— FRANCE. 

PAGE 

Efforts to introduce sacerdotal celibacy . . 255 

Contumacy of the clergy ..... 256 
William the Conqueror intervenes — First allusion 

to licenses to sin . . . . . 257 
Successful resistance of the Norman and Breton 

clergy 258 

Troubles in Flanders 259 

Confusion caused by the attempted reform . . 262 

Council of Clermont — Its canons disregarded . 263 

Condition of the monastic establishments . . 264 

Hereditary transmission of benefices . . . 265 

Miracles invoked in aid of the reform . . 266 

Calixtus II. commences a new reform . . . 267 

Resistance of the Norman priesthood . . . 268 
Abelard and Heloise — Standard of morals erected 

by the church 269 

Continuance of clerical marriage . . . 270 



XVII.— NORMAN ENGLAND 



1066 Canons not enforced by William I. 

1076 First effort made by the Council of Winchester 

1102 St. Anselm undertakes the reform — Council of 

London ..*.... 

Resistance of the priests — Failure of the move 
ment ....... 

1104 Henry I. uses the reform as a financial expedient 

1108 He enforces outward obedience . 

1126 Stubborn contumacy of the priesthood 

1129 Henry again speculates on clerical immorality 

1138 — 1171 Disorders of the English church . 

Consorts of priests no longer termed wives . 
1208 King John discovers their financial value . 

Venality of the ecclesiastical officials . 

" Focarise " still universal .... 

1215 Indignation of the clergy at the reforms of Inno 

cent III. ...... 

1237 Cardinal Otto and the Council of London . 

Popular poems concerning the reform . 



271 

272 

273 

275 
276 
277 
279 
280 
281 
283 
283 
284 
285 

286 
288 

289 



XIV CONTENTS. 

A. D. PAGE 

1250 — 1268 Gradual extinction of clerical marriage in England 290 

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln . . 292 

Fruitless legislation against concubinage . . 293 

12th-15th C. Sacerdotal marriage in Wales .... 293 

XVIII.— IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. 

Degradation of the Irish church prior to the 

twelfth century ...... 295 

1130—1149 Reforms of St. Malachi— Influence of Rome . 296 

Monastic character of the reformed church . . 297 

1186—1320 Condition of the church in the English Pale . 298 

Degeneration of the Scottish Culdees . . . 299 

1124 — 1153 David I. reforms the church and reestablishes 

celibacy ....... 300 

1225—1268 Immorality of the Scottish clergy . . .301 

XIX.— SPAIN. 

11th Cent. Independent barbarism of the Spanish church — 

Marriage universal ..... 302 

1068 — 1080 Encroachments of Rome — sacerdotal marriage con- 
demned 303 

1101 — 1129 Reforms of Diego Gelmirez — Marriage not inter- 
fered with 305 

1260 Legislation of Alfonso the Wise — Concubinage 

universal ....... 308 

1323 Concubinage organized as a safeguard by the laity 310 
Corruption throughout the middle ages . .311 

XX.— GENERAL LEGISLATION. 

1123 Marriage now first dissolved by Holy Orders . 313 

1130 The innovation not as yet enforced . . . 314 
1139 Sacerdotal marriage formally declared void by the 

Second Council of Lateran .... 315 
1148 Confirmed by the Council of Rheims — Denied by 

Gratian 316 

1150 The new doctrine receives no obedience . . 318 

1158 — 1181 Alexander III. insists upon it . . . 319 

But excepts immoral ecclesiastics . . . 320 

Conflict of rules and exceptions .... 322 



CONTENTS. 



XV 



A. D. PAGE 

1206—1255 Case of Bossaert d'Avesnes ..... 323 
Alexander III. proposes to restore clerical mar- 
riage 325 

1187 — 1198 Efforts of the popes to enforce the canons . . 326 
1215 Fourth Council of Lateran — Triumph of Sacer- 
dotalism 327 



XXI.— RESULTS 



Recognition of the obligation of celibacy 

Increase of immorality 
13th-15th C. Fruitless attempts to restrain corruption 
1231 Recognition of children of ecclesiastics 

1225 — 1416 Efforts to restrict hereditary transmission 
1317 Recognition of concubinage 

Successful resistance to reform . 
12th-15th C. Morals of the papal court . 

Influence on society of sacerdotal celibacy 

Influence of monachism 



330 
331 
333 
335 
338 
339 
340 
341 
346 
357 



XXII.— THE MILITARY ORDERS. 

1120 Knights of St. John vowed to celibacy . . 362 
1128 Knights of the Temple vowed to celibacy . .362 
1175 Knights of St. James of the Sword allowed to 

marry ........ 363 

1441 Marriage permitted to the Order of Calatrava . 364 

1496 And to the Orders of Avis and Jesus Christ . 365 

1167 Order of St. Michael allowed to marry once . 365 

Reforms attempted in the Order of St. John . 366 

The Teutonic Knights 366 

XXIII.— THE HERESIES. 





Asceticism of mediseval Manichseism . 


367 




Difficulty of combating it . 


369 


1146 


Antisacerdotalism — The Petrobrusians and Hen- 






ricians ........ 


370 


1148 


Eon de l'Etoile . . 


371 


c. 1160 


The Waldenses 


372 



XVI CONTENTS. 

A. D. PAGE 

1294 Antisacerdotalism of the Franciscans — The Frati- 

celli 375 

1341 John of Pirna 378 

1377 Wickliffe 378 

1394 The Lollards denounce clerical celibacy . . 381 

1415 — 1438 The Hussites — They maintain ascetic celibacy . 382 

1411—1414 Brethren of the Cross— Men of Intelligence . 385 

1488—1498 Savonarola 386 



XXIV.— THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 

Demoralization of the sacerdotal body . . 388 

1418 Futile efforts of the Council of Constance . . 390 

1422 Efforts of Martin V 392 

Undiminished corruption and symptoms of revolt 393 

1435 The Council of Bale attempts a reform . . 395 

Impotence of the Basilian canons — Venality of 

the papal court ...... 396 

1484 — 1500 Condition of the church in Italy, France, England, 

Spain, Germany, and Hungary . . . 398 

1496 Relaxation of monastic discipline . . . 402 

1476 John of Nicklaushausen 405 

Sacerdotal marriage advocated as a remedy . 405 

1479 John ot Oberwesel 407 

1485 Heresy of Jean Laillier 408 

XXV.— THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 

Irreverential spirit of the sixteenth century . . 410 

1510 Complaints of the Germans against the church . 411 

Immobility of the church 412 

Popular movement — Luther and Erasmus . .413 

1518 Official opposition to the abuses of the church . 416 
1517 — 1520 Luther neglects the question of celibacy — his 

gradual progress . . . . . .417 

1521 First examples of sacerdotal marriage . . . 419 
Approved by Carlostadt — Disapproved by Luther 419 

1522 Zwingli demands sacerdotal marriage — Luther 

adopts it ....... 421 

1524 Efforts of the church to repress the movement . 423 

Popular approbation — Protection in high' quarters 424 



CONTENTS. XV11 

A. D. PAGE 

1523 — 1524 Emancipation of nuns and monks . . . 425 

1525 Marriage of Luther 425 

Causes of popular acquiescence in the change . 427 

Extreme immorality of the clergy . . . 427 

Admitted by the Catholics to justify heresy . . 430 

1522 — 1526 Erasmus advocates clerical marriage . . . 432 

Assistance from ambition of temporal princes . 434 

1530 Efforts at reunion — Confession of Augsburg . 435 

Failure of reconciliation — League of Schmalkalden 438 

The Anabaptists 438 

1532 — 1541 Partial toleration — Difficulties concerning the 

Abbey lands 439 

1548 The Interim — Sacerdotal marriage tolerated . 441 

1552 The Keformation established by the Transaction 

ofPassau 443 



XXVI.— THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 

Conservative tendencies of England . . . 444 
1500—1523 John Colet and Sir Thomas More . . .445 
1524 Difficulties of the situation — Wolsey undertakes 

the destruction of monachism .... 447 

1528 General suppression of the smaller houses . . 448 

1532 Henry VIII. 's quarrel with Rome . . . 449 

1535 General visitation of monasteries, and suppression 

of most of them ...... 451 

Popular opinions — The Beggars' Petition . . 453 

1536 Popular discontent — The Pilgrimage of Grace . 455 
1537 — 1546 Final suppression of the religious houses . . 456 

Fate of their inmates ...... 460 

1535 — 1541 Irish monastic establishments destroyed . . 461 

Henry still insists on celibacy .... 461 

Efforts to procure its relaxation . . . . 463 

1537 Uncertainty of the subject in the public mind . 465 

1539 Henry's firmness — Act of the Six Articles . . 466 
Persecution of the married clergy . . . 469 

1540 Modification of the Six Articles .... 471 
1547 Accession of Edward VI. — Repeal of the Six 

Articles 472 



XV111 CONTENTS. 

A. S. PAGE 

1548 — 1549 Full liberty of marriage accorded to the clergy . 473 

Armed opposition of the people .... 474 

1552 Adoption of the Forty-two Articles . . . 475 
Difficulty of removing popular convictions . . 476 

1553 Accession of Queen Mary — Legislation of Edward 

repealed ....... 477 

1554 The married clergy separated and deprived . 478 
Suffering of the clergy in consequence . . 480 
England reconciled to Rome — Church lands not 

recalled 482 

1555 Cardinal Pole's Legatine Constitutions . . 483 

1557 More stringent legislation required — Revival of 

the old troubles 485 

1558 Accession of Queen Elizabeth .... 486 

1559 Delay in authorizing marriage — Uncertainty of 

the married clergy . . . . . .487 

Elizabeth yields, but imposes degrading restric- 
tions on clerical marriage .... 488 

1563 The Thirty-nine Articles — Increased emphasis of 

permission to marry ..... 490 

Elizabeth maintains her prejudices . . . 491 
Disrepute of sacerdotal marriage — Evil effects on 

the Anglican clergy ..... 494 



XXVII.— CALVINISM. 

1559—1640 The Huguenot Churches 498 

The Reformation in Scotland .... 501 
Corruption of the Scottish church in the sixteenth 

century 501 

1542 — 1559 Efforts at internal reform — their fruitlessness . 504 
Marriage assumed as a matter of course by the 

Protestants 506 

Temporal motives assisting the Reformation . 507 

Poverty of the Scottish church establishment . 508 

Influence of celibacy on the struggle . . . 509 
1560 No formal recognition of clerical marriage thought 

necessary . . . . . . .512 



CONTENTS 



XIX 



XXVIII.— THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 

A. D. PAGE 

1524—1536 Efforts at internal reform 514 

Universal demand for a general council — Con- 
voked at Mantua in 1536 .... 519 

1542 — 1547 Assembles at Trent — it labors to separate, not to 

reunite the churches ..... 520 

1551 — 1552 Reassembles at Trent — is again broken up . . 521 

1562 Again assembles for the last time . . . 522 
1536 Paul III. essays an internal reform without result 522 
1548 Charles V. tries to reform the German church . 524 
1548 — 1551 Local reformatory synods — their failure . . 525 
1560 Clerical marriage demanded as a last resort . 529 

Clerical corruption urged as the reason . . 530 

1563 The French court joins in the demand . . 533 
1560 The question prejudged ..... 533 

1563 The council makes celibacy a point of faith . . 536 
Attempts a reformation ..... 538 

1563 — 1564 The German princes continue their efforts . . 539 

Essays of Cassander and Wicelius . . . 542 

1564 Maximilian II. renews the attempt . . . 543 
His requests peremptorily rejected . . . 544 



XXIX.— THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH 



1566—1572 
1568—1570 
1565—1597 
1569—1668 



1560—1624 



Reception of the Council of Trent except in 

France 546 

Pius V. endeavors to effect a reform . . • 547 

Labors of St. Charles Borromeo at Milan . . 550 

Reforms vainly attempted by Italian councils . 552 

Condition of the church in Central Europe . . 553 

Marriage still practised until 1628 . . . 556 

Clerical immorality still a justification of heresy . 556 

Condition of the church in France . . . 568 

The residence of women conceded . . . 561 

The church in the Spanish Colonies . . . 562 

Abuse of the confessional ..... 566 

Abuse of the power of absolution . . . 575 

Influence of the casuistic spirit . . . • 578 



XX CONTENTS. 

XXX.— THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION. 

A. D. PAGE 

Sacerdotal marriage obsolete — Grandier, Da Pin, 

Bossuet 581 

1758 — 1800 The eighteenth century — Controversy reopened . 582 

1783 Joseph II. proposes to permit sacerdotal marriage 583 

1760 — 1787 Clerical immorality undiminished . . . 585 

1789 The French Revolution 588 

1789 — 1790 Confiscation of church property — Suppression of 

monachism ....... 589 

1791 Celibacy deprived of legal protection — Marriage 

of priests ....... 590 

1793 Marriage becomes a test of good citizenship . . 592 

Persecution of the unmarried clergy . . . 592 

Resistance of the great body of the clergy . . 594 

1795 — 1797 Married clergy repudiated by their bishops . . 595 

1801 Celibacy restored by the Concordat . . . 595 

1801 — 1807 Clerical marriage continues — Napoleon decides 

against it 597 

XXXI.— THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 



1815 — 1883 Vacillating policy in France as to clerical mar 
riage . ..... 

1821 — 1866 Various movements in favor of clerical marriage 

Immobility of the church .... 
1878 The Old Catholics adopt clerical marriage . 

Civil marriage laws opposed by the church . 

Celibacy not likely to be disturbed 
1820 — 1867 Suppression of monastic orders . 

Vigor and improvement of modern monachism 

Its influence in the field of education . 
1880 Suppression of unauthorized orders in France 

Influence of celibacy on clerical morality . 

Its influence on the social organization 



NOTE 



599 
601 
603 
604 
605 
607 
608 
611 
616 
621 
624 
638 



On Celibacy as a matter of faith under the Council 
of Trent 640 



SACERDOTAL CELIBACY. 



The Latin church is the great fact which dominates the history of 
modern civilization. All other agencies which moulded the destinies 
of mediaeval Europe were comparatively isolated or sporadic in their 
manifestations. Thus in one place we may trace the beneficent in- 
fluence of commerce at work, in another the turbulent energy of the 
rising Third Estate ; the mortal contests of the feudal powers with 
each other and with progress are waged in detached and convulsive 
struggles ; chivalry casts only occasional and evanescent flashes of 
light amid the darkness of military barbarism ; literature seeks to 
gain support from any power which will condescend to lend transi- 
tory aid to the plaything of the moment. Nowhere do we see 
combined effort, nowhere can we detect a pervading impulse, irre- 
spective of locality or of circumstance, save in the imposing ma- 
chinery of the church establishment. This meets us at every point, 
and in every age, and in every sphere of action. In the dim soli- 
tude of the cloister, the monk is training the minds which are to 
mould the destinies of the period, while his roof is the refuge of 
the desolate and the home of the stranger. In the tribunal, the 
priest is wrestling with the baron, and is extending his more humane 
and equitable code over a jurisdiction subjected to the caprices of 
feudal or customary law, as applied by a class of ignorant and arbi- 
trary tyrants. In the royal palace, the hand of the ecclesiastic, 
visible or invisible, is guiding the helm of state, regulating the 
policy of nations, and converting the brute force of chivalry into the 
supple instrument of his will. In Central Europe, lordly prelates, 
with the temporal power and possessions of the highest princes, joined 
to the exclusive pretensions of the church, make war and peace, and 
are sovereign in all but name, owing no allegiance save to Emperors 

2 



18 THE CHUECH. 

whom they elect and Popes whose cause they share. Far above all, 
the successor of St. Peter from his pontifical throne claims the whole 
of Europe as his empire, and dictates terms to kings who crouch 
under his reproof, or are crushed in the vain effort of rebellion. At 
the other extremity of society, the humble minister of the altar, with 
his delegated power over heaven and hell, wields in cottage as in 
castle an authority hardly less potent, and sways the minds of the 
faithful with his right to implicit obedience. Even art offers a 
willing submission to the universal mistress, and seeks the embodi- 
ment of its noblest aspirations in the lofty poise of the cathedral 
spire, the rainbow glories of the painted window, and the stately 
rhythm of the solemn chant. 

This vast fabric of ecclesiastical supremacy presents one of the 
most curious problems which the world's history affords. A wide 
and absolute authority, deriving its force from moral power alone, 
marshalling no legions of its own in battle array, but permeating 
everything with its influence, walking unarmed through deadly strife, 
rising with renewed strength from every prostration, triumphing alike 
over the savage nature of the barbarian and the enervated apathy of 
the Roman tributary, blending discordant races and jarring nations 
into one great brotherhood of subjection — such was the Papal hier- 
archy, a marvel and a mystery. Well is it personified in Gregory 
VII., a fugitive from Rome, without a rood of ground to call him 
master, a rival Pope lording it in the Vatican, a triumphant Emperor 
vowed to internecine strife, yet issuing his commands as sternly and 
as proudly to prince and potentate as though he were the unquestioned 
suzerain of Europe, and listened to as humbly by three-fourths of 
Christendom. The man wasted away in the struggle ; his death was 
but the accident of time : the church lived on, and marched to in- 
evitable victory. 

The investigations of the curious can hardly be deemed misapplied 
in analyzing the elements of this impalpable but irresistible power, 
and in examining the causes which have enabled it to preserve such 
unity of action amid such diversity of environment, presenting every- 
where by turns a solid and united front to the opposing influences of 
barbarism and civilization. In detaching one of these elements from 
the group, and tracing out its successive vicissitudes, I may therefore 
be pardoned for thinking the subject of sufficient interest to warrant 
a minuteness of detail that would otherwise perhaps appear dispro- 
portionate. 



THE CHURCH. 19 

The Janizaries of the Porte were Christian children, recruited by 
the most degrading tribute which tyrannical ingenuity has invented. 
Torn from their homes in infancy, every tie severed that bound them 
to the world around them ; the past a blank, the future dependent 
solely upon the master above them ; existence limited to the circle of 
their comrades, among whom they could rise, but whom they could 
never leave ; such was the corps which bore down the bravest of the 
Christian chivalry and carried the standard of the Prophet in triumph 
to the walls of Vienna. Mastering at length their master, they 
wrung from him the privilege of marriage ; and the class in becoming 
hereditary, with human hopes and fears disconnected with the one 
idea of their service, no longer presented the same invincible phalanx, 
and at last became terrible only to the effeminate denizens of the 
seraglio. The example is instructive, and it affords grounds for the 
assumption that the canon which bound all the active ministers of 
the church to perpetual celibacy, and thus created an impassable 
barrier between them and the outer world, was one of the efficient 
instruments in creating and consolidating both the temporal and 
spiritual power of the Roman hierarchy. 



I. 

ASCETICISM. 



The most striking contrast between the Mosaic Dispensation and 
the Law of Christ is the materialism of the one, and the pure spirit- 
ualism of the other. The Hebrew prophet threatens worldly punish- 
ments, and promises fleshly rewards: the Son of Man teaches us to 
contemn the treasures of this life, and directs all our fears and aspi- 
rations towards eternity. The exaggeration of these teachings by the 
zeal of fervent disciples led to the ascetic efforts to subjugate nature, 
which present so curious a feature in religious history, and of which 
those concerning the relations of the sexes form the subject of our 
consideration. 

This special phase of asceticism was altogether foreign to the tra- 
ditions of Israel, averse as they were to all restrictions upon the full 
physical development of man. Enjoying, apparently, no conception 
of a future existence, the earlier Hebrews had no incentive to sacri- 
fice the pleasures of the world for those of a Heaven of which they 
knew nothing; nor was the gross polytheism, which the monotheistic 
prophets combated, of a nature to lead to ascetic practices. The 
worship of Ashera — probably identical with the Babylonian Beltis or 
Mylitta — undoubtedly consecrated the sacrifice of chastity as a relig- 
ious rite, and those who revered the goddess of fertility as one of the 
supreme deities were not likely to impose any restrictions on the exer- 
cise of her powers. 1 We see, indeed, in the story of Judah and Tamar, 
and in the lamentation of the daughter of Jephthah, that virginity 
was regarded almost as a disgrace, and that child-bearing was con- 
sidered the noblest function of woman ; while the institution of levirate 
marriage shows an importance attributed to descendants in the male 



1 Amos ii. 7. — Deut. xxiii. 18. — 
Micah i. 7— Herod. I. 199.— Cf. Kue- 
nen, Keligion of Israel, I. 92-3, 368. 



— Kawlinson's Essay X. on Herod. I. 
Luciani de Syria Dea vi. 



22 



ASCETICISM. 



line as marked as among the Hindu Arya. The hereditary character 
of the priesthood, moreover, both as vested in the original Levites, and 
the later Tsadukim and Baithusin, indicates conclusively that even 
among the orthodox no special sanctity attached to continence, and that 
the temporary abstinence from women required of those who handled 
the hallowed articles of the altar (I. Samuel xxi. 4-5) was simply a 
distinction drawn between the sacerdotal class and the laity, for in the 
elaborate instructions as to uncleanness, there is no allusion made to 
sexual indulgence, though the priest who had partaken of wine was 
forbidden to enter the Tabernacle, and defilement arising from contact 
with the dead was a disability (Levit. x., xxi., xxii.), 1 while the highest 
blessing that could be promised as a reward for obedience to God 
was that " there shall not be male or female barren among you" 
(Deut. vii. 14). In fact, the only manifestation of asceticism as a re- 
ligious ordinance, prior to the Second Temple, is seen in the vow of 
the Nazirites, which consisted merely in allowing the hair to remain 
unshorn, in the abstinence from wine and in avoiding the pollution 
arising from contact with the dead. Slender as were these restric- 
tions, the ordinary term of a Nazirate was only thirty days, though 
it might be assumed for life, as in the cases of Samson and Samuel ; 
and the vows for long terms were deemed sufficiently pleasing to God 
to serve as means of propitiation, as in the case of Hannah, who thus 
secured her offspring Samuel, and in that of Helena, Queen of Adia- 
bene, who vowed a Nazirate of seven years if her son Izaces should 
return in safety from a campaign. 2 The few references to the custom 
in Scripture, however, show that it was little used, and that it exer- 
cised no visible influence over social life during the earlier periods. 

When the conquests of Cyrus released the Hebrews from captivity, 
the close relations established with the Persians wrought no change 
in this aspect of the Jewish faith. Mazdeism, in fact, was a religion 
so wholesome and practical in its character that asceticism could find 
little place among its prescribed observances, and the strict main- 
tenance of its priesthood in certain families who transmitted their 



1 "When the Church assumed that 
marriage was incompatible with the 
ministry of the altar, it was somewhat 
puzzled to reconcile the hereditary char- 
acter of the high priesthood with the 
morning and evening sacrifice required 
of the high priest (Exod. xxx. 7-8). 
For ingenious special pleading to ex- 



plain this away, see St. Augustin, Qusestt. 
in Pentateuch, in. lxxxii. and Retractt. 
II. lv. 2. 

2 Num. vi. 2-21. — Judges xiii-xvi. 
— I. Sam. i. 11. — Lament, it. 7-8. — 
Amos ii. 11-12. — I. Mace. in. '49. — 
Mishna, Tract. Nazir. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIA. 



23 



sacred lore from father to son, shows that no restrictions were placed 
upon the ministers of Hormadz, or athravas, 1 though in the later 
period of the Achaemenian empire, after the purity of ancient Maz- 
deism had become corrupted, the priestesses of the Sun were required 
to observe chastity, without necessarily being virgins. 2 With the con- 
quests of Alexander, however, Judaism was exposed to new influences, 
and was brought into relation at once with Grecian thought and with 
the subtle mysticism of India, with which intercourse became frequent 
under the Greek empire. Beyond the Indus the Sankhya philosophy 
was already venerable, which taught the nothingness of life, and that 
the supreme good consisted in the absolute victory over all human 
wants and desires. 3 Already Buddha had reduced this philosophy 
into a system of religion, the professors of which were bound to 
chastity — a rule impossible of observance by the world at large, but 
which became obligatory upon its innumerable priests and monks, 
when it spread and established itself as a church, thus furnishing the 
prototype which was subsequently copied by Roman Christianity. 4 
Already Brahmanism had invented the classes of Vanaprasthas, 
Sannyasis, and others — ascetics whose practices of self-mortification 
anticipated and excelled all that is related of Christian Antonys and 
Simeons — although the ancestor worship which required every man 
to provide descendants who should keep alive the Sraddha in honor of 
the Pitris of his forefathers postponed the entrance into the life of 
the anchorite until after he should have fulfilled his parental duties : 5 
and we know from the references in the Greek writers to the Hindu 
gymnosophists how great an impression these customs had made upon 
those to whom they were a novelty. 6 Already the Yoga system had 
been framed, whereby absorption into the Godhead was to be obtained 
by religious mendicancy, penances, mortifications, and the severest 



1 Yasht-Kordah 10. — Bahrain Yaslit 
46.— Sad-der, Porta C— Philost. de Vit. 
Sophistt. I. 10. 

2 Justin. Historiar. x. ii. 

3 Kapila's Aphorisms I. 1 (Ballan- 
tyne's Translation). — Sankhya Karika 
xlv., lxvi., lxviii. (Colebrook & 
"Wilson's Translation). — For the inter- 
course between India and the West, see 
A. Weber, "Die Verbindungen In- 
diens," etc., in " Indische Skizzen." 

4 Surangama Sutra (Beal's Catena, pp. 
348-9).— Davids and Oldenberg's Vin- 
aya Texts, Part I. p. 4. — Hodgson's 
Essays on the Languages, etc., of Nepal 



and Tibet, pp. 63, 68-70. — Hardy's 
Eastern Monachism, pp. 50 sqq. 

5 Manava Dharma Sastra iv. 257 ; 
vi. 1-81. Yet the Sutta Nipata, a Bud- 
dhist scripture of unquestioned anti- 
quity, states that of old the Brahmans 
practised celibacy up to the forty-eighth 
year. (Sir M. C. Swamy's Translation, 
p. 81.) Cf. Strabon. Lib. xv., and 
Clement. Alexand. Stromat. Lib. in. 

6 See Bisse's edition of Palladius de 
G-entibus Indise. — Diog. Laert. Prooem. 
— Philost. deVit. Apollon. Tyan. — Por- 
phyr. de Abstinent, iv. 17. 



24 



ASCETICISM 



severance of self from all external surroundings. 1 All this had been 
founded on the primaeval doctrine of the Vedas with respect to the 
virtue of Tapas, or austere religious abstraction, to which the most 
extravagant powers were attributed, conferring upon its votaries the 
authority of gods. 2 With all the absurdities of these beliefs and 
practices, they yet sprang from a profound conviction of the supe- 
riority of the spiritual side of man's nature, and if their theory of 
the nothingness of mortal existence was exaggerated, yet they tended 
to elevate the soul, at the expense, it must be confessed, of a regard 
to the duties which man owes to society. 

The influences arising from this system of religious philosophy, so 
novel to the Semitic races, were tardy is making themselves felt upon 
the Hebrews, but they became gradually apparent. The doctrine of 
a future life with rewards and punishments, doubtless derived from 
Chaldean and Mazdean sources during the Captivity and under the 
Persian Empire, slowly made its way, and though opposed by the 
aristocratic conservative party in power — the Tsadukim or Sadducees 
(descendants of Zadoc, or just men) — it became one of the distinctive 
dogmas of the Beth Sopherim or House of Scribes, composed of re- 
ligious teachers, trained in all the learning of the day, sprung from 
the people, and eager to maintain their nationality against the tem- 
porizing policy of their rulers. 3 At the breaking out of the Macca- 
bean revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes we find the nation divided 
into two factions, the Sadducees, disposed rather to submit to the 
Hellenizing tyranny of Antioch, and the Chassidim (the Assideans of 
the Authorized Version), democratic reformers, ready for innovation 
and prepared to die in defence of their faith. In the triumph of 
the Hasmonean revolution they obtained control of the state, and 
in the development of the Oral Law by the scribes, supplementing 



1 A. Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 163, 
237-9.— Wilson's Vishnu Purana, I. 
164. — Garrett's Class. Diet. India, p. 
753. 

2 Eig Yeda, VIII. vm. 48 (Langlois' 
Translation). — Muir's Sanskrit Texts, 
IV. 160 sqq. — Harivansa Lect. xxxn. 
— Hitopadesa (Lancereau's Transla- 
tion, pp. 178-9, and note to p. 160). 
The same follies? were common to Bud- 
dhism. See Fah-Hian (Beal's Bud- 
dhist Pilgrims, pp. 101-2).— Eitel's 
Handbook of Chinese Buddhism, pp. 
33, 76. — Bogers's Buddaghosha's Para- 
bles, p. 59. — How nearly Christian ex- 



travagance reached these altitudes may 
be seen by reference to the Umbilicani 
or Quietist monks of Mt. Athos, in the 
fourteenth century, who became suf- 
fused with divine light after prolonged 
contemplation of their navels (Basnage, 
in Canisii Thes. Monument. Eccles. IV. 
366, sqq. — Dupin, Bibl. des Auteurs 
Eccles. XI. 96. —Beal's Catena, p. 
151). 

3 A very good exposition of the 
Pharisaic revolution will be found in 
Cohen, Les Pharisiens, 2 vols. 8vo., 
Paris, 1877. 



THE ESSENES. 



25 



the Torah or Written Law, they engrafted permanently their doc- 
trines upon the ancestral belief. With the tenet of spiritual immor- 
tality, there followed as a necessary consequence the subordination of 
the present existence to life hereafter, which is the direct incentive to 
asceticism. The religious exaltation of the stormy period which in- 
tervened between the liberation from Antioch and the subjugation to 
Rome afforded a favorable soil for the growth of this tendency, and 
rendered the minds of the devout accessible to the influences both of 
Eastern and of Western speculation. How powerful eventually 
became the latter upon the Alexandrian Jews may be estimated from 
the mysticism of Philo. 

With their triumph over Antioch, the name of the Chassidim dis- 
appears as that of an organized party, and in its place we find those 
of two factions or sects — the Perushim (Pharisees) or Separatists, 
who maintained an active warfare, temporal and theological, with the 
Sadducees, and the Essenes, mystics, who bound themselves by vows, 
generally including the Nazirate, and withdrew from active life for 
the benefit of spiritual growth and meditation. 

The Essenes cultivated the soil and sometimes even lived in cities, 
but often dwelt as anchorites, using no artificial textures as clothing, 
and no food save what was spontaneously produced. They mostly 
practised daily ablutions and admitted neophytes to their society by 
the rite of baptism after a novitiate of a year, followed by two years 
of probation. Among those who did not live as hermits, property 
was held in common, and marriage was abstained from, and it is to 
this latter practice doubtless that reference was made by Christ in 
the text " There be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for 
the kingdom of heaven's sake." The Essenes enjoyed high consid- 
eration among the people; their teachings were listened to with 
respect, and they were regarded as especially favored with the gifts 
of divination and prophecy. There can be no doubt that John the 
Baptist was an Essene ; James of Jerusalem, brother of Jesus, was a 
Nazirite and probably an Essene, and Christ himself may reasonably 
be regarded as trained in the principles of the sect. His tendencies 
all lay in that direction, and it is observable that while he is un- 
sparing in his denunciations of the Scribes, and Pharisees, and Sad- 
ducees, he never utters a word of condemnation of the Essenes. 1 



1 Josephi Yit. 2. — Ejusd. Antiq. xv. 
x. 5; xvn. xiii. 3; xviii. i. 5. — 
Ejusd. Bell. Jud. n. viii. 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 



12.— Euseb. H. E. ii. 23, ex Hegesippo. 
— Hippol. Eefut. Omn. Haeres. ix. xiii.- 
xxii. — Philastr. Lib. de Haeres. ix. 



26 



ASCETICISM. 



It is thus easy to understand the refined spirituality of Christ's 
teachings, and the urgency with which he called the attention of 
man from the gross temptations of earth to the higher things which 
should fit him for the inheritance of eternal life. Yet his profound 
wisdom led him to forbear from enjoining even the asceticism of 
the Essenes. He allowed a moderate enjoyment of the gifts of the 
Creator; and when he sternly rebuked the Scribes and Pharisees 
for imposing, in their development of the Oral Law, burdens upon 
men not easily to be borne by the weakness of human nature, he 
was far indeed from seeking to render obligatory, or even to recom- 
mend, practices which only the fervor of fanaticism could render 
endurable. No teacher before him had ventured to form so lofty a 
conception of the marriage-tie. It was an institution of God himself 
whereby man and wife became one flesh. "What therefore God hath 
joined together let not man put asunder; " and though he refrained 
from condemning abstention from wedlock, he regarded it as possible 
only to those whose exceptional exaltation of temperament might 
enable them to overcome the instincts and passions of humanity. 1 

When the broad proselyting views and untiring energy of Paul, 
the apostle of the Gentiles, were brought to bear upon the little 
circle of mourning disciples, it was inevitable that a rupture should 
take place. No one in the slightest degree familiar with the spirit 
of Judaism at that day can have difficulty in understanding how 
those who still regarded themselves as Jews, who looked upon their 
martyr, not as the Son of God, but, in the words of Peter, as "Jesus 
of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles and 
wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you," and 
who held, as is urged in the Epistle of James, firmly to their Master's 
injunction to preserve every jot and tittle of the Law, should regard 
with growing distrust and distaste the activity of the Pharisee Paul, 
who, like other Pharisees, was ready to encompass land and sea to 
gain one proselyte, and, more than this, was prepared to throw down 
the exclusive barriers of the Law in order to invite all mankind to 
share in the glad tidings of Salvation. 2 The division came in time, 
and as the Gentile church spread and flourished, it stigmatized as 



— Matt. xix. 12. — Porphyr. de Absti- 
nent, iv. 11-13. — Philo probably ob- 
tained from the Essenes the ideal which 
he embodied in his account of the sup- 
posititious Therapeutse (Philon. Lib. de 
Vit. Contempl. pp. 690-1, Ed. 1613). 



1 Matt, xxxiii. 3.— Luc. xi. 46.— Matt, 
xi. 4-10. 

2 Acts ii. 44-6. — James ii. 10. — Matt, 
v. 17-19; xxiii. 15.— Cf. Galat. ii. 

7. 



PAULINE CHRISTIANITY 



27 



heretics those who adhered to the simple monotheistic reformed 
Judaism which Christ had taught. These became known as the 
Ebionim, or Poor Men, Essenes, and others, who followed Christ as 
a prophet inspired by God, who accepted all of the apostles save 
Paul, whom they regarded as a transgressor of the Law, holding 
their property in common, honoring virginity rather than marriage, 
but uttering no precept upon the subject, and observing the Written 
Law with rigid accuracy. They maintained a quiet existence for 
four centuries, making no progress, but exciting no antagonism save 
on the part of vituperative heresiologists, whose denunciations, how- 
ever, contain no rational grounds for regarding them otherwise than 
as the successors of the original followers of Christ. 1 

Meanwhile, Pauline Christianity, launched on the tumultuous exist- 
ence of the Gentile world, had adapted itself to the passions and 
ambitions of men, had availed itself both of their strength and of 
their weakness, and had become a very different creed from that 
which had been taught around the Sea of Galilee, and had seen its 
teacher expiate on Calvary his revolt against the Oral Law. In its 
gradual transformation through the ages, from Essenic and Ebionic 
simplicity to the magnificent sacerdotalism of the Innocents and 
Gregories, it has felt itself bound to find or make, in its earliest 
records, some precedent for every innovation, and accordingly its 
ardent polemics in modern times have endeavored to prove that the 
celibacy of its ministers was, if not absolutely ordained, at least 
practised from the earliest period. Much unnecessary logic and 
argument have been spent upon this subject since the demand which 
arose for clerical marriage at the Reformation forced the champions 
of the church to find scriptural authority for the canon which enjoins 
celibacy. The fact is that prior to the sixteenth century the fathers 
of the church had no scruple in admitting that in primitive times the 
canon had no existence and the custom was not observed. The 
reader may therefore well be spared a disquisition upon a matter which 
may be held to be self-evident, and be contented with a brief reference 
to some of the authorities of the church who, prior to the Reformation, 



1 Irensei contra Haeres. i. xxvi. 2. — 
Hippol. Eefut. Omn. Hgeres. vn. xxii. 
— Tertullii Prescript, xlvii. — Euseb. H. 
E. in. xxvii. — Epiphan. Panar. Heeres. 
xxx. — Hieron. Comment, in Matt. n. 
xii. 2. — It is possible that ' ' them which 
say they are Jews and are not," con- 



demned in Rev. ii. 9 ; iii. 9, were 
Ebionites. The Talmud represents the 
Jewish doctors, after the destruction of 
Jerusalem, as consorting familiarly and 
disputing with the Ebionite Christians 
(Cohen, II. 238-9). 



28 



ASCETICISM. 



admitted that in primitive times marriage was freely permitted to the 
ministers of Christ. 

No doctor of the church did more than St. Jerome to impose the 
rule of celibacy on its members, yet even he admits that at the be- 
ginning there was no absolute injunction to that effect ; and he en- 
deavors to apologize for the admission by arguing that infants must 
be nourished with milk and not with solid food. 1 In the middle of 
the eleventh century, during the controversy between Rome and Con- 
stantinople, Rome had no scruple in admitting that the celebrated 
text of St. Paul (I. Cor. ix. 5) meant that the apostles were married, 
though subsequent commentators have exhausted so much ingenuity 
in explaining it away. 2 A century later Gratian, the most learned 
canonist of his time, in the "Decretum," undertaken at the request 
of the papal court, which has ever since maintained its position as 
the standard of the canon law, felt no hesitation in admitting that, be- 
fore the adoption of the canon, marriage was everywhere undisturbed 
among those in orders, as it continued to be in the Greek church. 3 
The reputation of St. Thomas Aquinas as a theologian was as un- 
questioned as that of Gratian as a canonist, and the Angelic Doctor 
admitted as freely as the canon lawyer that compulsory celibacy was 
an innovation on the rules of the primitive church, which he endeavors 
to explain by an argument contradictory to that of St. Jerome, for 
he says that the greater sanctity of the earlier Christians rendered 
them superior to the asceticism requisite to the purity of a degenerate 
age, even as no modern warrior could emulate the exploit of Samson 
in throwing himself amid a hostile army with no other weapon than 
a jaw-bone. He even admits, what other authorities have denied, 
that Christ required no separation between St. Peter and his wife. 4 
There were in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries few more 
learned men than Giraldus Cambrensis, whose orthodoxy was un- 
questioned, and who, as Archdeacon of St. David's, vigorously sought 
to enforce the rule of continence upon his recalcitrant clergy. Yet 
in a strenuous exhortation to them to mend the error of their ways 
in this respect, he admits that clerical celibacy has no scriptural or 
apostolic warrant. 5 That this was universally admitted at the time 
is manifested by Alfonso the Wise, of Castile, about the middle of 



1 Hieron. adv. Jovin. I. 34. 

2 Gratiani Decret. P. I. Dist. xxxi. 
c. xi. 

3 Gratiani Comment, in Can. 13. 



Dist. lvi. See also Comment, in Dist. 

XXXI. 

4 Summan. ii. Qusest. 186 Art. 4 \ 3. 

5 Gemma Eccles. n. vi. 



ADMISSION OF SACERDOTAL MARRIAGE. 



29 



the thirteenth century, asserting the fact in the most positive manner, 
while forbidding marriage to the priests of his dominions, in the code 
known as Las Siete Partidas. 1 

Gerson, indeed, who, like most of the ecclesiastics of his time, at- 
tributes to the Council of Nicsea the introduction of celibacy, seems 
inclined to justify the change assumed to have been then made, by 
alluding to the forged donation of Constantine. That the temporal- 
ities of the church could only be entrusted to men cut off from family 
ties was an axiom in his day, and though he does not himself draw the 
conclusion, he clearly regarded the supposed accession to the landed 
estates of the church as a satisfactory explanation of the prohibition 
of marriage to its ministers in the fourth century. 2 Shortly after- 
wards, Pius II., one of the most learned of the popes, had no scruple 
in admitting that the primitive church was administered by a married 
clergy. 3 Just before the Reformation, Geoffroi Boussard, dean of 
the faculty of theology of Paris, published, in 1505, a dissertation on 
priestly continence, in which he positively assumes, as the basis of 
his argument, that the use of marriage was universally permitted to 
those in holy orders, from the time of Christ to that of Siricius and 
Innocent I. ; and this may be assumed to be the opinion of the 
University of Paris, for Boussard formally submitted his tract to that 
body, and its approbation is to be found in the fact that he was sub- 
sequently elevated to its chancellorship, and was sent as its delegate 
to the Council of Pisa. 4 

Even after the Reformation, unexceptionable orthodox authority 
is found to the same effect. In 1564, Pius IV. admitted it in an 
epistle to the German princes, and explained it by the necessity of 
the times. 5 Zaccaria, probably the most learned of Catholic polemics 
on the subject, endeavors to reconcile his belief in the Apostolic 
origin of clerical celibacy with the indubitable practice of the primi- 
tive church, by suggesting that while the Apostles commanded the 



1 Casar solien todos los clerigos antig- 
uamiente en el comienzo de la nuestra 
ley, segunt lo facien en la ley vieja de 
los judios : mas despues deso los clerigos 
de occidente, que obedecieron siempre a 
la eglesia de Roma, accordaron de vevir 
en castidat. — Las Siete Partidas i. vi. 39. 

2 Dial. Sophise et Naturae Act. 4. 

3 Non erravit ecclesia primitiva qua? 
sacerdotibus permisit uxores. — iEnei 
Sylvii Epist. cxxx. (ap. Zaccaria, 



Storia Polemica del Celibato Sacro, 
Roma, 1775, p. 354). 

4 Boussard's tract "De continentia 
Sacerdotum sub hac qusestione nova. 
Utrum papa possit cum sacerdote dis- 
pensare ut nubat," was several times 
reprinted. The edition before me is 
that of Niirnberg, 1510. 

5 LePlat, Concil. Trident. Monument. 
VI. 337. 



30 



ASCETICISM. 



observance of the rule by the clergy in general, yet in special cases 
they discreetly dispensed with it to avoid greater scandals ; and that 
with the gradual increase of these dispensations the clergy came at 
length to assume the indulgence as a matter of course without asking 
for special licenses. 1 More logical is the argument brought forward 
by a priest named Taillard, resisting in 1842 some efforts made to 
introduce priestly marriage in Prussian Poland. He coolly reasons 
that if celibacy was not enforced in the primitive church, it ought to 
have been — " if the celibacy of the priesthood be not from the be- 
ginning of Christianity, it ought to have been there, for, as our holy 
religion comes from God, it should contain in itself all the means 
possible to elevate the nations to the highest point of liberty and 
happiness." 2 



1 Zaccaria, op. cit. p. 65. It is curi- 
ous to observe how, in his anxiety to 
explain the neglect of the church for 
these assumed Apostolic commands, 
Zaccaria proceeds to show that the or- 
ders of the Apostles were never received 



as absolutely binding, as for instance in 
regard to the prohibition of eating blood 
and animals dead through strangulation 
(lb. p. 110). 

2 Taillard, Le Celibat des Pretres, 
Gnesen, 1842. 




II. 

THE ANTE-MCENE CHURCH 



Although no thought existed in the mind of Paul, and of his co- 
laborers in founding the church of the Gentiles, of prohibiting to his 
disciples the institution of marriage, there was a distinct flavor of 
asceticism in some of his teachings, which might readily serve as a 
warrant to those whose zeal was greater than their discretion, to 
mortify the flesh in this as in other ways. The Apostle, while 
admitting that the Lord had forbidden the separation of husband and 
wife, said of the unmarried and widowers: 

"It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain let 
them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn." 

And though in one passage he seems to indicate a belief that 
woman could only be saved by maternity from the punishment incurred 
by the disobedience of Eve, in another he formally declares that "he 
that giveth her in marriage doeth well ; but he that giveth her not in 
marriage doeth better," thus showing a marked preference for the 
celibate state, in which the devout could give themselves up wholly 
to the service of the Lord. 1 

The Apostle's discussion of these subjects shows that already there 
had commenced a strong ascetic movement, raising questions which 
he found hard to answer, without on the one hand repressing the 
ardor of serviceable disciples, and on the other, imposing burdens on 
neophytes too grievous to be borne. He foresaw that the former 
would soon run beyond the bounds of reason, and he condemned in 
advance the heresies which should forbid marriage; 2 but that the 
tendency of the faithful lay in that direction was inevitable. In 
those times, no one would join the infant church who did not regard 
the things of earth as vile in comparison with the priceless treasures 



I. Cor. vii. 8-9, 38.— I. Tim. ii. 14-15. 2 I. Tim. iv. 3. 



32 THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH. 

of heaven, and the more fervent the conviction, the more it was apt 
to find expression in mortifying the flesh and purchasing salvation by 
the sacrifice of passions and affections. Such especially would be 
the tendency of the stronger natures which lead their fellows; and 
the admiration of the multitude for their superior virtue and fortitude 
would soon invest them with a reputation for holiness which would 
render them doubly influential. 

There was much, indeed, in the teaching of the church, and in its 
relations with the Gentiles, to promote and strengthen this tendency. 
The world into which Christianity was born was hopelessly corrupt. 
Licentiousness, probably, has never been more defiant than amid the 
splendors of the early Empire. The gossip of Suetonius and the 
denunciations of Juvenal depict a society in which purity was scarce 
understood, and in which unchastity was no sin and hardly even a 
reproach. To reclaim such a population needed a new system of 
morality, and it is observable that in the New Testament particular 
stress is laid upon the avoidance of fornication, especially after the 
faith had begun to spread beyond the boundaries of Judea. The 
early Christians thus were a thoroughly puritan sect, teaching by ex- 
ample as well as by precept, and their lives were a perpetual protest 
against the license which reigned around them. 1 It therefore was 
natural that converts, after their eyes were opened to the hideous 
nature of the prevailing vices, should feel a tendency to plunge into 
the other extreme, and should come to regard even the lawful indul- 
gence of human instincts as a weakness to be repressed. Civilization, 
indeed, owes too much to the reform which Christianity rendered 
possible in the relations of the sexes, for us to condemn too severely 
even the extravagances into which it was sometimes betrayed. 

That it was becoming not uncommon for Christians to follow a 
celibate life is shown by various passages in the early fathers. St. 
Ignatius alludes to abstinence from marriage in honor of God as a 
matter not uncommon, but which was wholly voluntary and to be 
practised in humility and secrecy, for the virtue of continence would 
be much more than counterbalanced by the sin of pride. 2 The 

1 Quid enim enumeremus infinitam ( pus Ignat. p. 10.) This is the received 
multitudinem eorum qui ab incontinenti I Latin text, but the weight of authority 



intemperataque vita abducti sunt quum 
hsec ipsa didicissent? — Just. Mart. 
Apol. ii. 

2 li Si glorietur, perditur : et si videri 
velit plus Episcopo, corruptus est." — 
Ad Polycarp. cap. v. (Cureton's Cor- 



seems to incline rather to the reading 
tt?^v tov kiuoKoirov than izTiiov (Cureton, 
p. 228 — Petermann's Ignatius, 274-5). 
The difference, however, is of little 
moment to our present purpose. 



ASCETIC HERESIES 



33 



Apologists, Justin Martyr about the year 150, Athenagoras about 180, 
and Minucius Felix about 200, all refer to the chastity and sobriety 
which characterized the sect, the celibacy practised by some members, 
and the single marriage of others, of which the sole object was the 
securing of offspring and not the gratification of the passions. Athen- 
agoras, indeed, condemns the exaggerations of asceticism in terms 
which show that already they had made their appearance among the 
more ardent disciples, but that they were strongly disapproved by the 
wiser portion of the Church. Origen seems to regard celibacy as 
rather springing from a desire to serve God without the interruptions 
arising from the cares of marriage than from asceticism, and does not 
hesitate to condemn those who abandoned their wives even from the 
highest motives. 1 The impulse towards aceticism, however, was too 
strong to be resisted. Zealots were not wanting who boldly declared 
that to follow the precepts of the Creator was incompatible with 
salvation, as though a beneficent God should create a species which 
could only preserve its temporal existence by forfeiting its promised 
eternity. Ambitious men were to be found who sought notoriety or 
power by the reputation to be gained from self-denying austerities, 
which brought to them followers and believers venerating them as 
prophets. Philosophers were there, also, who, wearied with the end- 
less speculations of Pythagorean and Platonic mysticism, sought 
relief in the practical morality of the Gospel, and perverted the sim- 
plicity of its teachings by interweaving with it the subtle philosophy 
of the schools, producing an apparent intoxication which plunged 
them either into the grossest sensuality or the most rigorous asceticism. 
Such were Julian Cassianus, Saturnilus, Marcion, the founder of the 
Marcionites, Tatianus, the heresiarch of the Encratitians, and the 
unknown authors of a crowd of sects which, under the names of 
Abstinentes, Apotactici, Excalceati, etc., practised various forms of 
self-mortification, and denounced marriage as a deadly sin. 2 Such, 
on the other hand, were Valentinus and Prodicus who originated the 
mystic libertinism of the Gnostics; Marcus, whose followers, the 



1 Just. Mart. Apol. n. — Athenagor. 
pro Christianis Legat. — M. Minuc. 
Felicis Octavius. — Origenis Comment, 
in Matt. xiv. 24-5. 

2 So widely spread had these doctrines 
become by the end of the second cen- 
tury that Clement of Alexandria de- 
votes the third book of his Stromata to 
their discussion and refutation. It is 



not worth while to examine their pecu- 
liarities minutely here. The curious 
reader can find all that he is likely to 
want concerning them in Irenaeus, Hip- 
poly tus, Clement, Epiphanius, and 
Philastrius, without plunging further 
into the vast sea of controversial patris- 
tic theology. 



34 



THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 



Marcosians, were accused of advocating the most disgusting practices, 
Carpocrates who held that the soul was obliged to have experience of 
all manner of evil before it could be elevated to God ; Basilides whose 
sectaries honored the passions as emanating from the Creator, and 
taught that their impulses were to be followed. Even the Ebionites 
did not escape the taint, if Epiphanius is to be believed; and there 
was also a sect advocating promiscuous intercourse, to whom the name 
of Nicolites was given in memory of the story of Nicholas, the 
deacon of the primitive church, who offered to his fellow-disciples the 
wife whom he was accused of loving with too exclusive a devotion — 
a sect which merited the reproof of St. John, and which has a special 
interest for us because in the eleventh century all who opposed clerical 
celibacy were branded with its name, thus affording to the sacerdotal 
party the inestimable advantage of stigmatizing their antagonists 
with an opprobrious epithet of the most damaging character, and of 
invoking the authority of the Apocalypse for their destruction. 1 

The church was too pure to be led astray by the libertinism of 
the latter class of heresiarchs. The time had not yet come for the 
former, and men who, in the thirteenth century, might perhaps have 
founded powerful orders, and have been reverenced by the Christian 
world as new incarnations of Christ, were, through their anachro- 
nism, stigmatized as heretics, and expelled from the communion of 
the faithful. Still, their religious fervor and rigorous virtue had a 
gradually increasing influence in stimulating the development of the 
ascetic principle, if not in the acknowledged dogmas, at all events, 
in the practice of the church, as may be seen when, towards the close 
of the second century, Dionysius of Corinth finds himself obliged 
to reprove Pinytus, Bishop of Gnosus, for endeavoring to render 
celibacy compulsory among his flock, to the manifest danger of those 
whose virtue was less austere. 2 In all this, unquestionably, the 
ascetic ideas of the East had much to do, and these were chiefly repre- 
sented by Buddhism, which, since the reign of Asoka, in the third 
century B.C., had been the dominant religion of India. A curious 
allusion in St. Jerome to Buddha's having been born of a virgin, 3 



1 Apocalyps. n. 6, 14, 15, 20. — Irenoei 
contr. Hseres. i. xxvi. — Hippolyti Eef. 
omn. Hseres. iv. xxiv. — Clem. Alex. 
Stromat. Lib. III. — Epiphan. Hseres. 
xxv. — The injustice thus inflicted on 
the memory of the worthy Nicholas is 
recognized by the Apostolical Constitu- 



tions (Lib. iv. c. viii.). In 1679, E. P. 
Eothius published a dissertation (De 
Nicholaitis) , in which a vast mass of 
curious learning is brought to the vin- 
dication of the apostolic deacon. 

2 Kufln. Hist. Eccles.— Euseb. iv. 23. 

3 Hieron. adv. Jovin. Lib. I. c. 42. 



INFLUENCE OF BUDDHISM 



35 



shows a familiarity with details of Buddhist belief which presupposes 
a general knowledge of that faith ; and though the divinized Maya, 
wife of Suddhodana, is not absolutely described as a virgin in eastern 
tradition, yet she and her husband had taken a vow of continence 
before Buddha, from the Tushita heaven, to fulfil his predestined 
salvation of mankind and establishment of the kingdom of righteous- 
ness, had selected her as the vehicle of his incarnation. Much in 
the legend of his birth, of the miracles which attended it, of his 
encounter with the Tempter, and other details of his life, is curiously 
suggestive of the source whence sprang the corresponding legend of 
the life of Christ, more particularly as related in the pseudo-gospels. 1 
.Not only this, but many of the observances of Latin Christianity 
can scarce be explained save by derivation from Buddhism, such as 
monasticism, the tonsure, the use of rosaries, confession, penance, 
and absolution, the sign of the cross, relic-worship, and miracles 
wrought by relics, the purchase of salvation by gifts to the church, 
pilgrimages to sacred places, etc. etc. Even the nimbus which in sacred 
art surrounds the head of holy personages, is to be found in the 
sculptures of the Buddhist Topes, and the Sangreal, or Holy Cup of 
the Last Supper, which was the object of lifelong quest by the 
Christian knight, is but the Patra or begging-dish of Buddha, which 
was the subject of many curious legends. 2 It is no wonder that 
when the good Jesuit missionaries of the sixteenth century found 
among the heathen of Asia so much of what they were familiar with 
at home, they could not decide whether it was the remains of a preex- 
isting Catholicism, or whether Satan, to damn irrevocably the souls 
of men, had parodied and travestied the sacred mysteries and cere- 



1 Compare Beal's " Romantic Legend 
of Sakhya Buddha from the Chinese 
Sanscrit," pp. 33 sqq., with the Prote- 
vangelion, the Gospel of the Infancy, 
the Gospel of ISTicodemus, etc. 

Somewhat similar to the Buddhist 
legend is the assertion of the Jainas 
that their great Tirthankara, Mahavira, 
selected the womb of Brahamani Deva- 
nandi, wife of Rishabha Datta, as his 
place of birth ; but Sakra, indignant that 
he should be born in the Brahman 
caste, caused him to be transferred to 
Trisala, wife of the Kshatriya Siddhar- 
tha (Kalpa Sutra, Bk. i. ch. i. Steven- 
son's Translation, pp. 24, 38). Con- 
cerning the comparative priority of 
Jainism and Buddhism, see Thomas's 



" Jainism, or the early Faith of Asoka," 
London, 1877. 

In this connection, it is perhaps worth 
while to note the Mazdean belief in 
Saoshyans, the future Messiah, who, as 
in Judaism, is to overcome the evil 
powers at the end of the world, and 
preside over the resurrection of man- 
kind, and who is to be born of a virgin, 
Eredhat Fedri. (Vendidad, Fargard 
xix. 18; Bundehesh xxx. xxxn. 8, 9 ; 
Haug's Essays, Ed. 1878, pp. 313-14). 
The mode of his conception as related 
in the Bundehesh, may be compared 
with the less decent speculations of San- 
chez as to that of Christ. 

2 Beal's Buddhist Tripitaka, pp. 
114-5. 



36 



THE ANTE-NICENE CHUECH 



monies, and introduced them in those distant regions. 1 We are there- 
fore safe in ascribing to Buddhist beliefs at least a portion of the 
influence which led the church into the extravagances of asceticism. 
The first official manifestation of this growing tendency, applied to 
the relations of the sexes, is to be seen in the legislation with regard 
to second marriages. In the passages alluded to above from Athenagoras 
and Minucius Felix, the fact is referred to that second marriages were 
already regarded as little better than adulterous, while Justin Martyr 
denounces them as sinful, in spite of the permission so freely granted 
by St. Paul for such unions. 2 Though this opinion was branded by 
the church as heretical when it was elevated into an article of belief 
by the Montanists and Cathari, or Puritans, and though even the 
eminence and piety of Tertullian could not save him from excommu- 
nication when he embraced the doctrine, yet the orthodox came very 
near accepting it, for the Council of Neocsesarea, in 314, forbade 
priests from honoring with their presence the festivities customary 
on such occasions, as those who married a second time were subject 
to penance, and that of Laodicea, in 352, deemed it a matter of 
indulgence to admit to communion those who contracted such unions, 
after they had redeemed their fault by fasting and prayer for a 
certain time — a principle repeated by innumerable councils during 
the succeeding centuries. So far did this prejudice extend that as 
late as 484 we find the Pope, St. Gelasius, obliged to remind the 
faithful that such marriages are not to be refused to laymen. 3 It is 
by no means impossible that this opposition to repeated wedlock 
may have arisen, or perhaps have been intensified, by a similar feel- 
ing which existed among the Pagans, at least with regard to the 
second marriages of women. Moreover, in Rome the Flamen Dialis 
was restricted to a single marriage with a virgin, and such was the 
strictness with which this was observed that as the assistance of the 



1 Marini, Missioni di Tumkino,Koma, 
1663, pp. 125, 481, 490 sq. 

2 ' ' Quare vel ut natus est unusquisque 
nostrum manet, vel nuptiis copulatus 
imicis, secundfe enim decorum quoddam 
adulterium sunt. ' ' Athenag. pro Christ. 
Legat. — u Unius matrimonii vinculo 
libenter inhaeremus, cupiditate procre- 
andi aut unam scimus aut nullam. " M. 
Minuc. Felicis Octavius. — " Ut ii qui 
lege humanabis conjugium ineunt pecca- 
tores sunt apud preeceptorem nostrum." 
Justin. Mart. Apol. II. — I. Cor. vii. 39. 



3 Concil Neocses. ann. 314 c. 7. — Con- 
cil. Laodicens. ann. 352 c. 1. — Gelasii 
PP. I. Epist. ix. Rubr. ad cap. xxii. — 
Cf. Hieron. Epist. xlviii. apologeticus, 
c. 18. — Ejusd. Comment, in Jeremiam 
Prolog. Even in modern times the 
priest who pronounces a benediction on 
a second marriage commits an offence 
subjecting him to punishment (Rodri- 
guez, Nuova Somma de'Casi di Cos- 
cienza, Venez. 1609. P. I. cap. ccxl. 
No. 4). 



RESTRICTION TO SINGLE MARRIAGE. 37 

Flaminica, his wife, was necessary to the performance of some re- 
ligious rites, he was obliged to resign when left a widower. 1 

Although the church forbore to prohibit absolutely the repetition 
of matrimony among the laity, it yet, at an early though uncertain 
period, imitated the rule enforced on the Flamen Dialis, and rendered 
it obligatory on the priesthood, thus for the first time drawing a dis- 
tinct line of separation between the great body of the faithful and 
those who officiated as ministers of Christ. It thus became firmly 
and irrevocably established that no " digamus " or husband of a 
second wife was admissible to holy orders. As early as the time of 
Tertullian we find the rule formally expressed by him, and he even 
assures us that the whole structure of the church was based upon the 
single marriages of its ministers. Indeed, the holy rites came to 
be regarded as so entirely incompatible with repetition of wedlock 
that the Council of Elvira, in 305, while admitting that in cases of 
extreme necessity a layman might administer baptism, is careful to 
specify that he must not be a " digamus." 2 

Yet this restriction on the priesthood was not easily enforced, and 
already we begin to hear the complaints, which have followed uninter- 
ruptedly for more than fifteen hundred years, of the evasion or dis- 
regard of the regulations whereby the church has sought to repress 
the irrepressible instincts of humanity. In the early part of the 
third century Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus, in his enumeration of 
the evil ways of Pope Calixtus, taxes the pontiff with admitting to 
the priesthood men who had been married twice, and even thrice, 
and with permitting priests to marry while in orders. Even the 
great apostle of celibacy, St. Jerome, expresses surprise that Oceanus 
should object to Carterius, a Spanish bishop, on the ground that he 
had had a wife before baptism, and a second one after admission to 
the church. The world, he adds, is full of such prelates, not only in 
the lower orders but in the episcopate, the digamous members of which 
exceed in number the three hundred prelates lately assembled at the 
Council of Rimini. Yet this was the formal rule of the church as 
enunciated in the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons — bodies of eccle- 
siastical law not included, indeed, in the canon of Scripture, but yet so 



1 Val. Max. n. i. 3.— Plut. Queestt. 
Eoman. 105. — Diod. Sicul. xn. 14. — 
Tertull. Lib. di Exhort. Castit. xiii. — 
Auli Gellii x. 15. 



2 Tertull. Lib. di Exhort. Castit. vn.; 
de Monogam. xi. — Concil. Eliberit. 
xxxviii. 



38 



THE ANTE-NICENE CHUECH. 



venerable that their origin was already lost sight of, and they were every- 
where received as authoritative expositions of primitive discipline. 1 

The introduction of this entering-wedge is easily explicable. St. 
Paul had specified the monogamic condition — " unius uxoris vir" — 
as a prerequisite to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate, and the 
temper of the times was such as to lead irresistibly to this being 
taken in its literal sense, rather than to adopt the more rational view 
that it was intended to exclude those among the Gentiles who in- 
dulged in the prevalent vice of concubinage, or who among the Jews 
had fallen into the sin of polygamy — or those among either race who 
had taken advantage, either before or after conversion, of the dis- 
graceful laxity prevalent with regard to divorces, for, as we learn 
from Origen, the rule was by no means obeyed which forbade a 
divorced person to marry during the lifetime of the other spouse. 2 

When once this principle was fairly established, and when at the 
same time the efforts of the Montanists to render it binding on the 
whole body of Christian believers had failed, a distinction was en- 
forced between the clergy and the laity, as regards the marriage-tie, 
which gave to the former an affectation of sanctity, and which was 
readily capable of indefinite expansion. It is therefore easy to com- 
prehend the revival, which shortly followed, of the old Levitical rule 
requiring the priesthood to marry none but virgins — a rule which 
was early adopted, though it took long to establish it in practice, for 



1 Hippol. Kef. omn. Hseres. ix. vii. — 
Hieron. Epist. lxix. ad Oceanum. — 
Constit. Apostol. vi. 17. — Canon. Apos- 
tol. xvii., xviii., xix. 

2 I. Tim. iii. 2, 11, 12— Tit. i. 6.— 
Origenis Comment, in Matt. xiv. 23. 
The polygamy practised by the Jews 
from the earliest times was continued 
after the Dispersion. Justin Martyr 
taxes them with it (Dial, cum Try- 
phone), and Theodosius, in 393, endeav- 
ored to suppress it (Const. 7 Cod. Lib. 
II. Tit. ix.) by a law, the preservation of 
which by Justinian, after an interval 
of nearly a century and a half, shows 
that the necessity for the prohibition 
still existed. Even among some of the 
eastern Christians the precept was re- 
quired, if we may believe some ancient 
Arabic canons, which pass under the 
name of the Council of Nicsea (Decret. 
ex quatuor Kegum libris can. v. ap. 
Harduin. Concil. I. 511). 

This explanation of St. Paul's injunc- 



tion is adopted by Theophylact (Com- 
ment, in 1. Epist. ad Timoth.) and is 
expressed in the paraphrase " non plures 
habens uxores quam unam," in a tract 
of uncertain date, attributed to St. 
Cyprian or St. Augustin (De xn. 
Abusionibus Seculse cap x. ap. Opp. S. 
Cypriani Mantissa p. 49, Oxon. 1682). 
This is likewise the view put forward 
by the Church of Geneva in 1563, when 
replying to certain queries of the Hugue- 
not Synod of Lyons (Cap. xxi. Art. x. 
ap. Quick, Synodicon in Gall. Keform. 
I. 49). Origen 's discussion of the matter 
(Comment, in Matt. xiv. 23-4) shows 
how doubtful he considered it. 

In fact, if the text is to be construed 
with rigorous exactness, it would exclude 
all unmarried men from the episcopate, 
and this seems to be the sense attributed 
to it in the Apostolic Constitutions (Lib. 
ii. c. ii.), which in commenting upon 
it do not appear to contemplate bache- 
lors as eligible. 



NEO-PLATONISM. 



39 



as late as 414 we find Innocent I. complaining that men who had 
taken widows to wife were even elevated to the episcopate, and Leo 
I. devoted several of his epistles to its enforcement. 1 A corollary to 
this speedily followed, which required a priest whose wife was guilty 
of adultery to put her away, since further commerce with her ren- 
dered him unfit for the functions of his office; and this again, as 
subsequent authorities were careful to point out, afforded a powerful 
reason for requiring absolute celibacy on the part of the clergy, for, 
in view of the fragility of the sex, no man could feel assured that he 
was not subject to this disability, nor could the faithful be certain 
that his ministrations were not tainted with irregularity. 2 We thus 
reach the state of ecclesiastical discipline at the close of the third 
century, as authoritatively set forth in the Apostolical Constitutions 
and Canons — bishops and priests allowed to retain the wives which 
they may have had before ordination, but not to marry in orders ; 
the lower grades, deacons, subdeacons, etc., allowed to marry after 
entering the church ; but all were to be husbands of but one wife, 
who must be neither a widow, a divorced woman, nor a concubine. 3 

Meanwhile, public opinion had moved faster than the canons. 
Ascetic sects multiplied and increased, and the highest authorities in 
the church could not always resist the contagion. A fresh incite- 
ment, indeed, had been found in the neo-platonic philosophy which 
arose in the beginning of the third century. Ammonius Saccas, its 
founder, was a Christian, though not altogether orthodox, and his 
two most noted disciples, Origen and Plotinus, fairly illustrate the 
influence which his doctrines had upon both the Christian and the 
Pagan world. As to the latter, neo-platonism borrowed from Chris- 
tian and Indian as well as Greek philosophy, evolving out of them 
all a system of elevated mysticism in which the senses and the ap- 
petites were to be controlled as severely almost as in the Sankhya 
and Buddhist schools. Commerce between the sexes was denounced 
as a pollution degrading to the soul, and the best offering which a 
worshipper could bring to the Deity was a soul absolutely free from 
all trace of passion. 4 Although neo-platonism engaged in a hopeless 



1 Levit. xxi. 13-14.— Innocent. PP. I. 
Epist. xxii. c. 1.— Epistt. Leon. PP. I. 
ap. Harduin. Concil. I. 1767, 1772, 
etc. 

2 Concil. Eliberit. can. 65. — Concil. 
Neocaesarens. c. 8. — Concil. Tarraconens. 
ann. 516. can. 9. — Boussardus de Con- 



tinent. Sacerdot. Prop. 6., Nuremb., 
1510. 

3 Constit. Apostol. vi. 17. — Canon. 
Apostol. VI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XXVII. 

* Porphyr. de Abstinent, n. 46, 61 ; 
iv. 20. — Cf. Jambl. de Mysteriis iv. xi. 
— Damasceni Vit. Isidori 311. 



40 



THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH. 



struggle to stay the advancing tide of Christianity, and thus became 
its most active opponent, yet the lofty asceticism which it inculcated 
could not be without influence upon its antagonists, were it only 
through inflaming the emulation of those who were already predis- 
posed to regard the mortification of the flesh as a means of raising 
the soul to communion with God. 1 

How these motives worked upon an ardent and uncompromising 
temperament is seen in the self-sacrifice of Origen, showing how ab- 
sorbing was the struggle, and how intense was the conviction that 
nature must be conquered at all hazards and by any practicable 
means, although he himself afterwards condemned this practical ren- 
dering of the text {Matt. xix. 12) on which it was founded. Origen 
was by no means the first who had sought in this way to gain the 
kingdom of heaven, for he alludes to it as a matter by no means un- 
exampled, and before him Justin Martyr had chronicled with appro- 
bation a similar case. In fact, there is said to have been an obscene 
sect which under the name of Valesians followed the practice and 
procured proselytes by inflicting forcible mutilation upon all who 
were unhappy enough to fall into their hands ; and though their 
date and locality are unknown to those who allude to them, it would 
be rash, in view of similar eccentricities existing in more modern 
times, to pronounce them wholly apocryphal. The repeated prohi- 
bitions of the practice, in the canons of the succeeding century, 
show how difficult it was to eradicate the belief that such self-immo- 
lation was an acceptable offering to a beneficent Creator. Sextus 
Philosophus, an ascetic author of the third century, whose writings 
long passed current under the name of Pope Sixtus II., did not hesi- 
tate openly to advocate it, and though his arguments were regarded 
as heretical by the church, they were at least as logical as the prac- 
tical application given to the texts commonly cited in defence of the 
prohibition of marriage. 2 



1 For the influence of Buddhism on 
Neo-platonism, Gnosticism, and Mani- 
chgeism, see A.Weber, Indische Skizzen, 
pp. 63, 91. 

2 Origenis Comment, in Matt. xv. 1-8. 
— Just. Martyr. Apolog. II. — Epiphan. 
Hseres. lvii. — Can. Apostol. xxn. 
xxiii. xxiy. — Concil.Nicsen.c.i. — Con- 
cil. Arelatens. II. ann. 452 c. vii., etc. — 
Sexti Philos. Sent. ix. — At the close of 
the twelfth century the canons were re- 
laxed by Clement III. in favor of a 



priest of Kavenna whose ascetic ardor 
had led him to follow the example of 
Origen, and who was permitted to re- 
tain all the functions of the priesthood 
except the ministry of the altar (Can. 
iv. Extra, I. xx.). In the sixteenth cen- 
tury, Ambrosio Morales, a Dominican, 
took the same effectual means to extin- 
guish his passions and was in conse- 
quence expelled from the Order, as re- 
quired by the canons. He betook him- 
self to literature and died in 1590, at 



VOLUNTARY VOWS OF CHASTITY. 



41 



Not all, however, who sought the praise or the merits of austerity 
were prepared to pay such a price for victory in the struggle with 
themselves. Enthusiastic spirits, exalted with the prospect of earthly 
peace and heavenly rewards promised to those who should preserve 
the purity of virginity and live abstracted from the cares and pleasures 
of family life, frequently took the vow of continence which had 
already become customary. This vow as yet was purely voluntary. 
It bound those who assumed it only during their own pleasure, nor 
were they during its continuance, in any way segregated from the 
world. So untrammelled, indeed, were their actions that Cyprian is 
forced to rebuke the holy virgins for frequenting the public baths in 
which both sexes indiscriminately exposed themselves, and he does 
not hesitate to attribute to this cause much of the ruin and dishonor 
of its votaries which afflicted the church. 1 Yet, this was by no means 
the severest trial to which many of them subjected their constancy. 
Perhaps it was to court spiritual martyrdom and to show to their ad- 
mirers a virtue robust enough to endure the most fiery trials, perhaps 
it was that they found too late that they had overestimated their 
strength, and that existence was a burden without the society of some 
beloved object — but, whatever may have been the motive, it became 
a frequent custom to associate themselves with congenial souls of the 
other sex, and form Platonic unions in which they aspired to main- 
tain the purity which they had vowed to God. At the best, the sensi- 
ble members of the church were scandalized by these performances, 
which afforded so much scope for the mockery of the heathen; but 
scandal frequently was justified, for Nature often asserted her out- 



the age of sixty, while professor of 
eloquence in the University of Alcala 
(De Thou, Lib. xcix.). The practice 
has perpetuated itself to the nineteenth 
century in a Russian sect, which Cath- 
erine II. and her successors endeavored 
in vain to repress. In 1818 Alexander 
II. ordered the enthusiasts banished to 
Siberia, but the ardor with which they 
courted martyrdom rendered their zeal 
dangerously contagious and they were 
left in obscurity, in the hope of their 
dying out (Pluquet, Diet, des Heresies, 
s. v. MutiUs de Russie). This proved 
equally ineffectual, for a recent traveller 
describes them under the name of Skop- 
sis as a large tribe inhabiting the Cau- 
casus, where they flourish in spite of 
the most energetic measures of repres- 



sion on the part of the government — 
imprisonment, banishment to Siberia, 
conscription, and even the death pen- 
alty being powerless to overcome their 
fanaticism (Brugsch, Reise der Preus- 
sischen Gesandschaft nach Persien, 
1860-1, ap. London Eeader, Jan. 3, 
1863). Buffon (Hist. Nat. de 1 'Homme, 
ap. Helsen, Abus du Celibat des Pretres, 
p. 52) states that he was acquainted 
with a priest who had adopted this mode 
as the only one to preserve his virtue. 

1 Cyprian, de Habit. Virgin. — That 
such laxity was indulged in by pro- 
fessed virgins is the more remarkable 
since promiscuous bathing was forbid- 
den to every one by the Apostolic Con- 
stitutions, Lib. i. c. x. 



42 



THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 



raged rights to the shame and confusion of the hapless votaries of an 
artificial and superhuman perfection. Tertullian does not hesitate to 
assert that the desire of enjoying the reputation of virginity led to 
much secret immorality, the effects of which were concealed by re- 
sort to infanticide. 1 Cyprian chronicles, not with surprise but sor- 
row, the numerous instances which he had known of ruin resulting 
to those who had so fatally miscalculated their power of resistance: 
with honest indignation he denounces the ecclesiastics who abandoned 
themselves to practices which, if not absolutely criminal, were bru- 
tally degrading: and with a degree of common-sense hardly to be 
looked for in so warm an admirer of the perfection of virginity, he 
advises that those whose weakness rendered doubtful the strict ob- 
servance of their vows should return to the world and satisfy their 
longings in legitimate marriage. 2 The heresiarch Paul of Samosata 
affords, perhaps, the most conspicuous example of the extent to which 
these and similar practices were sometimes carried, and in condemning 
him, the good fathers of the Council of Antioch lamented the general 
prevalence of the evils thence arising. 3 Cyprian's prudent consider- 
ation for the weakness of human nature was as yet shared by the 
ecclesiastical authorities. In the order of widows professed, which 
was recognized by the early church, the Apostolic Constitutions enjoin 
that none should be admitted below the age of sixty, in order to avoid 
the danger of their infringing their vows by a second marriage, but 
the writer is careful to add that such a marriage is not to be con- 
demned for itself, but only on account of the falsehood which it occa- 
sioned. These widows and virgins were supported out of the tithes 
of the church, and were, therefore, necessarily subjected to its con- 
trol, so that it is perfectly evident that there was nothing irrevocable 
in the vows wherewith they were bound. The change is marked by 
the end of the century, when widows who thus forsook their order 
were unrelentingly and irrevocably condemned, deprived of com- 
munion, and expelled from social intercourse. 4 

While the Christian world was thus agitated with the speculative 



1 Tertull. de Virgin, veland. c. xv. 

2 Cyprian. Epist. iv. ad Pomponium. 

3 Concil. Antioch (Harduin. Concil. 
I. 198). Cf. Lactant. Divin. Instit. vi. 
xix. — Extravagances of this kind long 
continued to be a favorite exercise with 
enthusiasts. In 450 the anchorites of 
Palestine are described as herding to- 



gether without distinction of sex, and 
with no garments but a breech-clout ; 
while others who frequented the cities 
exhibited their self-control by appear- 
ing in the public baths with women. 
(Niceph. Callist. H. E. xiv. 50.) 

* Constit. Apost. n. i. ii. — Statut. 
Eccles. Antiq. civ. 



INFLUENCE OF MANICH^ISM 



43 



doctrines and practical observances of so many enthusiasts, heretical 
and orthodox, who seemed to regard the relations between the sexes 
as the crucial test and most trustworthy exponent of religious ardor, 
a new dogma arose in the East and advanced with a rapidity which 
shows how much progress the ascetic spirit had already made, and 
how ripe were the unsettled minds of zealots to welcome whatever 
system of belief promised to trample most ruthlessly upon nature, 
and to render the path of salvation inaccessible to all save those 
capable of the sternest self-mortification. Towards the end of the 
third century, the Persian Manes made his advent in the Empire, 
proclaiming himself as the Paraclete and as a new and higher Apostle. 
Though his career as an envoy of Christ was stoutly resisted by the 
orthodox, and though, after a chequered life, he was flayed alive, and 
his followers in Persia were slaughtered by Varahran I., 1 his western 
disciples were more fortunate, and the hateful name of Manichaean 
acquired a sinister notoriety which maintained its significance for a 
thousand years. His system was a compound of several faiths, and 
though it failed in its comprehensive design to bring all mankind 
together in one form of belief, it yet had features which won for it 
the enthusiastic adhesion of men of diverse races. The way was 
already prepared for its reception among both Gentiles and Chris- 
tians by the prevalence on the one hand of the Mithraic worship, 
and on the other of Gnosticism. The Dualistic theory was attractive 
to those who were disheartened in the vain attempt to reconcile the 
existence of evil with an omnipotent and all-merciful Creator ; the 
Platonic identity of the soul with the Godhead was a recommenda- 
tion to the schoolmen ; the Brahmanical and Buddhist views as to 
abstinence from meat and marriage won adherents among the remains 
of the ascetic sects, and were acceptable even to those among the 
orthodox who were yielding to the increasing influence of asceticism. 
The fierce temporal persecution of the still Pagan emperors, and the 
unavailing anathemas of the church, as yet confined to mere spiritual 
censures, seemed only to give fresh impetus to the proselyting energy 
of the Elect, and to scatter the seed more widely among the faithful. 
After this period we hear but little of the earlier ascetic heresies ; 



1 Chronique de Tabari, Ed. Rothen- 
berg, II. 90. It is curious to observe 
that Persian tradition represented Manes 
as a Chinese magician and an excellent 
painter, who constructed figures that 
were able to move, and thus deceived 



the people. After gaining the confi- 
dence of the monarch, he was van- 
quished in controversy with the chief 
Mobed, and was flayed alive. (Mohl's 
Livre des Rois, V. 379-81.) 



44 



THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH. 



the system of Manes, as moulded by his followers, was so much 
more complete, that it swallowed up its prototypes and rivals, and 
concentrated upon itself the vindictiveness of a combined church and 
state. So thorough was this identification that in 381 an edict of 
Theodosius the Great directed against the Manichreans assumes that 
the sects of Encratitse, Apotactitee, Hydroparastitse, and Saccofori 
were merely nominal disguises adopted to elude detection. 1 

That Manichseism, in fact, exercised a substantial influence over 
orthodoxy is shown in other directions besides that of asceticism. 
It can scarce be doubted that the expansion of the penitential remis- 
sion of sins into the system of purchasable indulgences received a 
powerful impulsion from the precedent set by Manes ; and the de- 
nunciations of Ephraem Syrus form a fitting precursor to those of 
Luther. In the same way the Eucharist was diverted from its origi- 
nal form of a substantial meal — one of the means by which the 
charity of the church was administered to the poor — into the sym- 
bolical wafer and wine which assimilated it so closely to the Izeshne 
sacrifice, the most frequent Mazdean rite, and one which, like the 
Mass, was customarily performed for the benefit of departed souls. 2 
Manes, in combining Mazdeism with Christianity, had adopted the 
Eucharist in the Mazdean form, and had confined the use of the cup 
to the priesthood ; and this lay communion in one element became 
so well recognized as a test of Manichseism that Leo the Great 
ordered the excommunication of all who received the sacrament after 
that fashion. 3 It may therefore be remarked as a curious coincidence 
that when Manichseism was revived by the Albigenses, in the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries, the church, which until then had preserved its 
ancient custom, adopted the lay communion in one element and 
adhered to it so rigidly that, as we shall see hereafter, not even 
the dread of the Hussite schism nor the earnest requests of those 



1 Lib. xvi. Cod. Theod. Tit. v. 1. 7. 
— Cf. Concil. Quinisext, c. 95. 

Scythianus, the precursor of Manes, 
is said by Epiphanius (Hseres. lxvi.) 
to have visited India and to have 
brought from there certain books of 
magic, which must have been Bud- 
dhist, as Buddhism was at that period 
supreme in the Peninsula. His dis- 
ciple, Terbinthus, the link between 
him and Manes, assumed the name 
of the Buddha. 

* Ephrasmi Syri Hymn. n. (Weg- 



nern, Manichasorum Indulgentias, 
Lipsias 1827) — Thomas's Sassanian 
Inscriptions, p. 65. — Mainyo-i-khard, 
West's Ed. xvi. 16 sq. and West's 
note p. 160; Glossary p. 64. — Haug's 
Essays, Bombay Ed. p. 239. — Shayast 
la-Shavast xvn. 2 (West's Pahlavi 
Texts/ Pt. I. p. 382 and West's note 
p. 284). — Dadistan-i Dinik, ch. xxviii. 
-xxx. (Pahlavi Texts, II. 58 sqq.) — 
Plutarch de Isid. et Osirid. 46. — 
Justin. Mart. Apolog. II. 

3 Leon. PP. I. Serm. xlii. cap. 5. 



INFLUENCE OF MANICHiEISM. 45 

who remained faithful during the perils of the Reformation, could 
induce it to grant the cup to the laity. Lay communion in one ele- 
ment drew a line of distinction between the priest and his flock 
which the former would not willingly abandon. 

Although, in the region of asceticism, the church might not be 
willing to adopt the Manichsean doctrine that man's body is the work 
of the Evil Principle, and that the Soul as partaking of the sub- 
stance of God was engaged in an eternal war with it, and should thus 
abuse and mortify it 1 , yet the general tendencies of the religious en- 
thusiasm of the time made the practical result common to all, and 
there can be no doubt that the spreading belief in Manes exercised a 
powerful influence in accelerating the progress of orthodox asceti- 
cism. The fact that as yet the church was persecuted and had no 
power of imposing its yoke on others bound it to the necessity of 
maintaining its character for superior sanctity and virtue ; and ardent 
believers could not afford to let themselves be outdone by heretics in 
the austerities which were popularly received as the conclusive evi- 
dence of religious sincerity. We may therefore easily imagine a 
rivalry in asceticism which, however unconscious, may yet have pow- 
erfully stimulated the stern and unbending souls of such men as St. 
Antony, Malchus, and Hilarion, even as Tertullian, after combating 
the errors of Montanus, adopted and exaggerated his ascetic heresies. 
It would be easy to show from the hagiologies how soon the church 
virtually assented to the Manichsean notion that the body was to be 
mortified and macerated as the only mode of triumphing in the per- 
ennial struggle with the evil principle, but this would be foreign to 
our subject. It is sufficient for us here to indicate how narrowly in 
process of time she escaped from adopting practically, if not theoret- 
ically, the Manichsean condemnation of marriage. This is clearly 
demonstrated by the writings of the orthodox Fathers, who in their 
extravagant praise of virginity could not escape from decrying wed- 
lock. It was stigmatized as the means of transmitting and perpet- 
uating original sin, an act which necessarily entailed sin on its 
participants, and one which at best could only look for mercy and 
pardon and be allowed only on sufferance. It is therefore not sur- 
prising if those who were not prepared to join in the progress of 
asceticism should habitually stigmatize the mortifications of their 



1 Epiphan. Hseres. lxvi. — The same doctrine was held by the Patricians, ac- 
cording to Philastrius, P. in. No. 15. 



46 



THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH. 



more enthusiastic brethren as Manichseism in spirit if not in name. 
Jovinian, it would seem, did not neglect this ready means of attack ; 
nor was he alone, for Jerome complains that the worldly and disso- 
lute sheltered themselves behind the same excuse, and derided as 
Manichaeans all who were pallid and faint from maceration and fast- 
nig. 1 The comparison, indeed, became a not untruthful one, when 
the Christian and the heretic both adopted the plan of restricting their 
sacred class from the pleasures of the world — when the Manichaean 
Elect, who remained unmarried and fasted upon vegetable food, were 
equivalent to the priesthood, while the Auditors, to whom a larger 
liberty was allowed, represented the orthodox laity. It is by no 
means improbable that the tenets of the Manichseans have been ex- 
aggerated by their opponents in controversy, and that in process of 
time, when the church became avowedly ascetic, there was practically 
little difference on this point between Manichaeism and Orthodoxy. 
St. Augustin, indeed, represents the Manichaean Faustus as arguing 
that both in doctrine and practice his sect only followed the example 
of the church. He ridicules the idea that it could prohibit marriage, 
and asserts positively that it only encouraged those who manifested 
a desire to persevere in continence. If this is to be received as an 
authentic exposition of Manichaean principles, it will be seen that 
the church was not long in outstripping the heretics. 2 

In fact, even as early as the time of Cyprian, that saint, in allusion 
to the parable of the sower, had rated the comparative merits of mar- 
tyrdom to virginity as one hundred to sixty ; while, after martyrdom 
had gone out of fashion, St. Patrick, in the fifth century, undertook 
a more elaborate classification in which bishops and doctors of the 
church, monks and virgins, were rated at one hundred, ecclesiastics 
in general and widows professed at sixty, while the faithful laity 
stand only at thirty. 3 It was therefore a heresy for Jovinian to 
claim equal merit for maidens, wives, and widows ; and though St. 
Jerome, in controverting this, commenced by carefully denying any 
intentional disrespect towards marriage, still his controversial ardor 
carried him so far in that direction, that he aroused considerable 
feeling among reasonable men and was obliged formally and re- 
peatedly to excuse himself. His contempt for marriage, indeed, was 



1 Hieron. adv. Jovin. i. 3. — Ejusd. 
Epist. ad Eustoch. c. 5. 

2 Augustin. Epist. lxxiy. ad Deu- 



terium — Ejusd. contra Faustum Lib. 
xxx. c. iv. 

3 Cyprian, de Habit. Virgin. — Synod. 
II. S. Patric. c. 18. 



DEPRECIATION OF MARRIAGE 



47 



so extreme that in spite of the recognized primacy of St. Peter, he 
considered that apostle as decidedly inferior to St. John, because the 
one had a wife and the other was a virgin — apparently not observing 
that, as he denied the marriage of all the apostles save Peter, he was 
thus relegating the head of the church to the last place among the 
holy twelve. 1 St. Augustin recognized the difficulty of reconciling 
the current views of his time with the necessities of humanity when 
he wrote a treatise for the purpose of proving the difference between 
the good of marriage and the evil of carnal desire, which, while it 
perpetuated the species, likewise perpetuated original sin ; and he 
gave a signal example of the manner in which enthusiastic asceticism 
sought to improve upon the work of the Creator when he uttered the 
pious wish that all mankind should abstain from marriage, so that 
the human race might the sooner come to an end. 2 St. Martin of 
Tours was somewhat less extravagant when he was willing to admit 
that marriage was pardonable, while licentiousness was punishable 
and virginity glorious ; and he was far behind the enthusiasts of his 
time, for, while he deplores the miserable folly of those who consider 
marriage to be equal to virginity, he is likewise obliged to reprove 
the error of those who were willing only to compare it to lechery — 
the former belief being evidently much more erroneous than the 
latter in the Saint's estimation. 3 So a treatise on chastity, which 
passes under the name of Sixtus III., barely admits that married 
people can earn eternal life ; and it apparently is only the dread of 
being classed with Manichseans that leads the author to shrink from 
the conclusions of his own reasoning, and to state that he does not 
absolutely condemn wedlock or prohibit it to those who cannot re- 
strain their passions. 4 Not a little Manichsean in its tendency is a 
declaration of Gregory the Great to Augustin the Apostle of Eng- 
land that connubial pleasures cannot possibly be free from sin ; and 
quite as decided is another assertion of the same Pope that the strict- 
ness of monastic life is the only possible mode of salvation for the 
greater portion of mankind. 5 It Avas the natural practical deduction 



1 Hieron. adv. Jovin. I. 2, 26. — Ejusd. 
Epistt. L. LI. LII. 

2 Augustin. de Concupisc. et de Nup- 
tiis. — Ejusd. de Bono Conjugali c. x. — 
Panzini (Confessione di un Prigioniero, 
p. 193) is not far wrong in suggesting 
that the learned doctors who thus decry 
marriage are guilty of the blasphemy of 
addressing their creator — ' ' Vergogna- 



tevi di avere inventato un modo cosi 
turpe per darci l'esistenza ! " 

3 Sulpic. Sever. Dial. II. 

4 In Mag. Bib. Pat. T. V. P. n. pp. 
652, 658. 

5 Gregor. P.P. I. Kegist. Lib. xi. 
Epist. lxiv. Kespons. 10 ; Lib. in. Epist. 
lxv. 



48 THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH. 

from this which is drawn by the Penitential of Theodore, when it 
commands those who contract a first marriage to abstain from enter- 
ing a church for thirty days, after which they are to perform penance 
for forty more ; while a digamus is subjected to penance for a year, 
and a trigamus, or one oftener married, for seven years. 1 When 
marriage was thus regarded as a sin, we can scarcely be surprised at 
the practical Manichaeism of Epiphanius who declares that the church 
is based upon virginity as on its corner-stone. 2 

This ascetic development, however, was not destined to triumph 
without occasional efforts at repression. At the close of the third 
century, the highest authorities of the church still condemned the 
ruthless asceticism, which was subsequently glorified as the loftiest 
achievement of Christian virtue. Thus in the Apostolic Constitu- 
tions, the influence of Manichseism and its kindred sects is as yet 
only manifested by the opposition aroused to their doctrines ; and the 
necessity of that opposition is indicated by the careful and repeated 
declaration of the purity and sanctity of the marriage-tie, both as 
regards the priesthood and the laity. Not less instructive is the bare 
toleration almost grudgingly extended to vows of celibacy, and the 
cautious restriction which declares that such vows are not to be held 
as justifying a disparagement of matrimony. 3 No stronger contrast 
can be looked for than that produced by little more than a century 
between the rational piety of these provisions and the extravagant 
rhapsodies of Jerome, Augustin, and Martin. The calm good sense 
of Lactantius also takes occasion to reprove the extravagance which 
regarded all indulgence of the natural affections as a sin requiring 
repentance and pardon. He assumes indeed that perpetual con- 
tinence, as being opposed to the law of nature, is not recommended, 
but only permitted by the Creator, thus reversing the maxims of the 
zealots. 4 Equally suggestive are the Apostolic Canons. The sixth 
of these pronounces deposition on the bishop or priest who separates 
himself from his wife under pretext of religion; while the fiftieth 
threatens equally rigorous punishment on the clerk or layman who 
shall abstain from marriage, from wine, or from meat, not for the 
purpose of devoting himself to piety, but on account of holding them 
in abomination — such belief being a slander on the goodness of God, 



1 Theodor. Penitent. Lib. I. c. xiv. 
1, 2, 3. (Haddon & Stubbs's Councils, 
III. 187.) 

2 Epiphan. Exposit. Fid. Cathol. 



3 Constit. Apostol. Lib. iv. c. 14; 
vi. 11, 14, 26, 27, 28; vm. 30. 

4 Lactant. Instit. Divin. VI. xvi. 
xxiii. 



KESTKICTIONS ON PAGAN PRIESTHOOD. 



49 



and a calumny on the perfection of His works. 1 Even a hundred 
years later there is still an occasional protest to be heard, showing 
how the more moderate section of the church still felt the danger to 
which she was exposed by intemperate ascetic zeal, and how narrow 
was the path which she had to trace between orthodoxy and heresy. 
The Fourth Council of Carthage, in 398, prescribing the examina- 
tion to which all bishops-elect were to be subjected, specifies for 
inquiry among other points of faith questions as to whether the can- 
didate disapproves of marriage, or condemns second marriages, or 
prohibits the use of meat. 2 It shows how readily Manichaeism or 
Catharism might lurk in the asceticism of the most devout. 

The tide, however, was fairly on the flood, and the resistance of the 
more reasonable among ecclesiastics was unavailing. It is true, that the 
influences which were now so powerful could evidently not be applied 
to the whole body of believers, as they would only result in gradual 
extinction or in lawless licentiousness; but as the ecclesiastical body 
was perpetuated by a kind of spiritual generation, it could, without 
hazarding a decrease of numbers, be subjected to regulations which 
should render obligatory the asceticism which as yet had been optional. 
The only wonder, in fact, is that this had not been earlier attempted. 
Such a rule, by widening the distinction between laymen and ecclesi- 
astics, would be grateful to the growing sacerdotalism which ere long 
was to take complete possession of the church. Such a rule, moreover, 
was not only indicated by the examples of Buddhism and Manichseism, 
but had abundant precedent among the Pagans of the Empire. More 
than one passage in classical writers show that abstinence from women 
was regarded as an essential prerequisite to certain religious observ- 
ances, and the existence of this feeling among the primitive Christians, 
based upon the injunction of Ahimelech, is indicated by St. Paul 3 — 
and this custom, as sacerdotalism developed, and formalism ren- 
dered the life of the minister of the altar a ceaseless round of 



1 The fiftieth canon was omitted by 
Dionysius Exiguus, but was subse- 
quently admitted by the church, not- 
withstanding that it proves in the clear- 
est manner the full enjoyment of mar- 
riage by all grades of the clergy. The 
sixth canon (numbered fifth in the full 
collection) which prohibits the separa- 
tion of ecclesiastics from their wives, 
was likewise accepted, although in the 
eighteenth century Cabassut stigma- 
tizes it as heretical. 



2 Cone. Carthag. IV. c. 1. 

3 Thus Tibullus (Lib. I. El. i.)— 

" Vos quoque abesse procul jubeo, discedite 
ab aris, 
Queis tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus. 
Casta placent Superis." 

Cf. Juvenal, vi. 534-5.— vElii Lam- 
prid. Alex. Sever, xxix. — Porphyr. de 
Abstinent, n. 50; iv. 6, 7. — Arriani de 
Epictet. Disertt. Lib. in. c. xxi. — I. 
Cor. vii. 5. 



50 THE ANTE-NICENE CHUKCH. 

daily service, would practically separate husband and wife. More- 
over, much of the Pagan worship subjected its officials to general 
restrictions of greater or less severity. Diodorus Siculus states that 
the Egyptian priests were permitted to have but one wife, although 
unlimited polygamy was allowed to the people ; while Chseremon the 
Stoic, according to St. Jerome, and Plutarch indicate that they were 
obliged to observe entire continence. The castration of the Galli, 
the priests of Rhea at Hierapolis, though explained by the myth of 
Attys, was evidently only a survival of the fierce asceticism which 
counterbalanced the licentiousness of the older Phenician worship. 
The rites of the Gaditanian Hercules were conducted by ministers 
obliged to observe chastity, and the foot of woman was not permitted 
to pollute the sacred precincts of the temple ; while the priestesses of 
Gea Eurysternus at JEgse were required to preserve the strictest 
celibacy. 1 The hierophants of Demeter in Athens, were obliged to 
maintain unsullied continence. The priestesses of the Delphic 
Apollo, the Achaian Hera, the Scythian Artemis, and the Thespian 
Heracles were virgins. In Africa, those of Ceres were separated from 
their husbands with a rigor of asceticism which forbade even a kiss 
to their orphaned children; while in Rome the name of Vestal has 
passed into a proverb, although it is true that while they were only 
six or seven in number, the distinguished honors and privileges ac- 
corded to them were insufficient to induce parents to devote them to 
the holy service, and there was difficulty in keeping the ranks filled. 2 
The earliest recorded attempt by the church to imitate these re- 
strictions, was made in 305 by the Spanish council of Elvira, which 
declared, in the most positive manner, that all concerned in the 
ministry of the altar should maintain entire abstinence from their 
wives under pain of forfeiting their positions. It further endeavored 
to put an end to the scandals of the Agapetse, or female companions 
of the clergy, which the rigor of this canon was so well fitted to 
increase, by decreeing that no ecclesiastic should permit any woman 
to dwell with him, except a sister or a daughter, and even these only 



1 Diod. Sicul. i. 80. — Hieron. adv. 
Jovin. ii. 13. — Plut. de Isid. et Osirid. 
2. — Lucian. de Syria Deaxv. — Sil. Ital. 
Punicor. in. 21-8.— Cf. Virg. ^Eneid. 
vi. 661. — Pausan. vn. xxv. 8. Egyp- 
tian customs in this respect may perhaps 
he traced to the vow of continence 
made hy Isis after the death of her 
husband-brother, Osiris (Diod. Sicul. I. 
27). The Emperor Julian's neo-pla- 



tonic explanation of the Syrian asceti- 
cism (Orat V.) is not without analogy 
to some of the rhapsodies of the fathers 
in the praise of virginity. 

2 Juliani Imp. Orat. V.— Tertull. de 
Monogam. xvii. ; ad Uxorem i. 6 ; de 
Exhort. Castit. xiii. — Hieron. adv. 
Jovin. i. 26. — Pausan. ix. xxvii. 5. — 
Sueton. Octav. xxxviii. 



COMMENCEMENT OF ENFORCED CELIBACY. 



51 



when bound by a vow of virginity. 1 This was simply the legislation 
of a local synod, and its canons were not entitled to respect or obedi- 
ence beyond the limits of the churches directly represented. Its 
action may not improbably be attributed to the commanding influence 
of one of its leading members, Osius, Bishop of Cordova, and that 
action had no result in inducing the church at large to adopt the new 
rule, for some ten years later were held the more important councils 
of Ancyra and Neocsesarea, and the absence of any allusion to it in 
their proceedings seems to fix for us the discipline of the period in 
this respect, at least in the East. By the canons of Ancyra we 
learn that marriage in orders was still permitted, as far as the 
diaconate, provided the postulant at the time of ordination declared 
his desire to enjoy the privilege and asserted his inability to remain 
single. This is even less stringent than the rule quoted above from 
the Apostolic Constitutions, and proves incontestably that there was 
no thought of imposing any restriction upon the intercourse between 
the married clergy and their wives. By the council of Neoca^sarea 
it was provided that a priest marrying in orders should be deposed, 
but a heavier punishment was reserved for what was then, in reverse 
of the standard of later times, regarded as the greater sin of licen- 
tiousness. That no interference was intended by this with the rela- 
tions existing between those who had married in the lower grades 
and their wives, is shown by another canon which deprives of his 
functions any priest who submitted to the commission of adultery by 
his wife without separating from her — being a practical extension of 
the Levitical rule, now by common consent adopted as a portion of 
ecclesiastical discipline. 2 Yet, even in the East, there was a growing 
tendency to more rigid asceticism than this, for, about the same 
period, we find Eusebius stating that it is becoming in those who are 
engaged in the ministry of God, to abstain from their wives, though 
his argument in justification of this is based upon the multiplicity of 
occupation, which in civilized society rendered it desirable for those 
enlisted in the service of the church to be relieved from family cares 
and anxieties. 3 



1 Concil. Eliberitan, can. 27, 33.— The 
29th canon of the first council of Aries 
held in 314, if genuine, marks the ex- 
tension of the movement eastward, hut 
as it is contained in but one MS., Mansi 
supposes it probably to belong to some 
subsequent and forgotten synod. It is 
almost identical with Concil. Telensis 



ann. 386 can. 9 ; and, whatever be its 
date, its phraseology evidently indicates 
that it records the first introduction of 
the rule in its locality. 

2 Concil. Ancyran. ann. 314 can 9. — 
Concil. Neocsesar. ann. 314 can 1, 8. 



Euseb. Demonstr. Evang. i. 



IX. 



III. 

THE COUNCIL OF NICE A. 



Thus far the church had grown and strengthened without any 
recognized head or acknowledged legislative power. Each patriarch 
or metropolitan, surrounded by his provincial synod, established regu- 
lations for his own region, with no standard but the canon of Scrip- 
ture, being responsible only to the opinion of his compeers, who 
might refuse to receive his clergy to communion. Under this demo- 
cratic autonomy the church had outlived persecution, had repudiated 
and cast out innumerable successive heresies, and, thanks to external 
pressure, had managed to preserve its unity. The time, however, 
had now come for a different order of things. Constantine, following 
the dictates of his unerring political sagacity, allied himself with the 
Christians and professed conversion; and Christianity, powerful even 
when merely existing on sufferance, became the religion of the state. 
As such, the maintenance of its unity was a political necessity, to 
accomplish which required some central power entitled to general 
respect and implicit obedience. The subtle disputations concerning 
the fast-spreading Arian heresy were not likely to be stilled by the 
mere ipse dixit of any of the Apostolic Sees, nor by the secular wis- 
dom of crown lawyers and philosophic courtiers. A legislative tri- 
bunal, which should be at once a court of last appeal and a senate 
empowered to enact laws of binding force, as the final decisions of 
the Church Universal, was not an unpromising suggestion. Such 
an assemblage had hitherto been impossible, for the distances to be 
traversed and the expenses of the journey would have precluded an 
attendance sufficiently numerous to earn the title of (Ecumenic; but 
an imperial rescript which put the governmental machinery of posts 
at the service of the prelates could smooth all difficulties, and enable 
every diocese to send its representative. In the year 325, therefore, 
the First General Council assembled at Nicsea. With the fruit- 



MEANING OF THE NICENE CANON. 



53 



lessness of its endeavors to extinguish the Arian controversy we have 
nothing to do, but in its legislative capacity its labors had an influence 
upon our subject which merits a closer examination than would ap- 
pear necessary from the seemingly unimportant nature of the pro- 
ceedings themselves. 

With the full belief that the canons of a general council were the 
direct operation of the Holy Ghost, they were of course entitled to 
unquestioning reverence, and those of Nicsea have always been re- 
garded as of special and peculiar authority, cutting off all debate on 
any question to which they might be applicable. The third of the 
series has been the main reliance of sacerdotal controversialists, and 
has been constantly appealed to as the unanswerable justification for 
enforcing the rule of discipline which enjoined celibacy on all ad- 
mitted to holy orders. Its simple phraseology would hardly seem to 
warrant such conclusion. " The Great Synod has strictly forbidden 
to bishop, priest, and deacon, and to every ecclesiastic, to have a 
'subintroductam mulierem,' unless perhaps a mother, a sister, an 
aunt, or such person only as may be above suspicion." 1 

This is the only allusion to the subject in the Nicene canons. As 
it does not include wives among those exempted from the prohibition 
of residence, we can hardly be surprised that those who believe 
celibacy to be of apostolic origin should assume that it was intended 
to pronounce an absolute separation between husband and wife. As 
the Council of Elvira, however, contains the only enunciation of such 
a rule previous to that of Nicsea, and as those of Ancyra and Neocag- 
sarea and the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons, directly or indi- 
rectly, allow the conjugal relations of ecclesiastics to remain undis- 
turbed, we are certainly justified in assuming the impossibility that 
an innovation of so much importance would be introduced in the dis- 
cipline of the universal church without being specifically designated 
and commanded in terms which would admit of no misunderstanding. 
That the meaning of the canon is really and simply that alone which 
appears on the surface — to put an end to the disorders and scandals 



1 I give the version of Dionysius 
Exiguus : ' ' Interdixit per omnia magna 
synodus, non episcopo, non presbytero, 
non diacono, nee alicui omnino qui in 
clero est, licere subintroductam habere 
mulierem ; nisi forte matrem, aut soro- 
rem, aut amitam, vel eas tantum per- 
sonas quse suspiciones effugiunt. ' ' 

An Arabic version of the Nicene ca- 



nons specially limits the prohibition to 
bishops, and to unmarried priests and 
deacons. — " Decernimus ut episcopi non 
habitent cum mulieribus. . . . Idem 
decernitur de omni sacerdote coelibe, 
idemque de diaconis qui sine uxore 
sunt." (Harduin. Concil. I. 463.) — 
This expresses nearly the discipline of 
the Greek church. 



54 



THE COUNCIL OF NIC^IA. 



arising from the improper female companions of unmarried priests — 
is, moreover, I think, susceptible of easy demonstration. 

The term " subintroducta mulier" — yvvrj cweioaKTo? — is almost in- 
variably used in an unfavorable sense, and is equivalent to the 
"foemina extranea," and nearly to the "focaria" and "concubina" 
of later times, as well as to the "agapeta" and u dilecta" of earlier 
date. We have already seen how Cyprian, seventy-five years before, 
denounced the agapetse who even then were so common, and whose 
companionship proved so disastrous to all parties, but the custom con- 
tinued, and its evil consequences became more and more openly and 
shamelessly displayed. In 314 the council of Ancyra denounced it 
in terms implying its public recognition. 1 At the close of the same 
century, Jerome still finds in it ample material for his fiery indigna- 
tion; and his denunciations manifest that it was still a corroding 
cancer in the purity of the church, prevailing to an extent that ren- 
dered its suppression a matter of the utmost importance. 2 The testi- 
mony of Epiphanius is almost equally strong, and shows that it was 
a source of general popular reproach. 3 Such a reform was therefore 
well worthy the attention of the Nicene fathers, and that this was 
the special object of the canon is indicated by Jerome himself, who 
appeals to it as the authority under which an ecclesiastic refusing to 
separate himself from his agapeta could be punished; it was to be 
read to the oifender, and if he neglected obedience to its commands, 
he was to be anathematized. 4 

That it had no bearing upon the wives of priests can moreover 
be proved by several reasons. The restriction on matrimony has 
never at any time extended below the subdiaconate, the inferior 
grades of the secular clergy having always been free to live with 
their wives, even in the periods of the most rigid asceticism. The 
canon, however, makes no distinction. Its commands are applicable 



1 Concil. Ancyrens. can. 18. 

2 Pudet dicere, proh nefas ! triste sed 
verum est. Unde in ecclesias Agapet- 
arum pestis introiit ? unde sine nuptiis 
aliud nomen uxorum ? immo unde 
novum concubinarum genus ? Plus 
inferam. Unde meretrices univirse? 
eadem domo, uno cubiculo saepe tenen- 
tur et lectulo : et suspiciosos nos vocant 
si aliquid extimemus. Prater sororem 
virginem deserit, coelibum spernit virgo 
germanum, fratrem quserit extraneum : 
et cum in eodem proposito esse se simu- 



lent, quserunt alienorum spiritale sola- 
tium, ut domi habeant carnale commer- 
cium. (Epist. xxn. ad Eustoch. c. 5.) 
It should be observed that celibacy had 
become the rule of the church at the 
time when Jerome wrote thus. 

3 Accusant nimirum eos qui in ec- 
clesia dilectas appellatas, aliunde intro- 
ductas ac cohabitantes fceminas habent. 
— Panar. Hseres. lxiii. 

4 Hieron. Epist. ad Oceanum de Vit. 
Cleric. 



MEANING OF THE NICENE CANON. 



55 



" alicui omnino qui in clero est." To suppose, therefore, that it 
was intended to include wives in its restriction is to prove too much 
— the reductio ad absurdum is complete. 1 Equally convincing is 
the fact that when, towards the close of the century, the rule of celi- 
bacy and separation was introduced, and Siricius and Innocent I. 
ransacked the Gospels for texts of more than doubtful application 
with which to support the innovation, they made no reference what- 
ever to the Nicene canon. 2 Had it been understood at that period 
as bearing on the subject, it would have been all-sufficient in itself. 
The reverence felt for the Council of Nicaea was too great, and the 
absolute obedience claimed for its commands was too willingly ren- 
dered, for such an omission to be possible. That Siricius and Inno- 
cent should not have adduced it is therefore proof incontrovertible 
that it was as yet construed as directed solely against the improper 
companions of the clergy. If further evidence to the same effect 
be required, it may be found in a law of Honorius, promulgated in 
420, in which, while forbidding the clergy to keep "mulieres ex- 
traneae" under the name of "sorores," and permitting only mothers, 
daughters, and sisters, he adds that the desire for chastity does not 
prohibit the residence of wives whose merits have assisted in render- 
ing their husbands worthy of the priesthood. 3 The object of the 
law is evidently to give practical force and effect to the Nicene canon, 
and the imperial power under Honorius had sunk to too low an ebb 
for us to imagine the possibility of his venturing to tamper with and 
overrule the decrees of the most venerable council. 4 Even in the 
sixth century the Nicene canon was not yet considered to have the 
meaning subsequently attributed to it, for otherwise there would have 
been no necessity of inserting a provision prohibiting the marriage of 
priests in the account forged at that time of a Roman council said to 
have been held by Silvester I. 5 



1 When, during the demoralization 
of the tenth century, the council of 
Augsburg made a spasmodic effort to 
revive the neglected rule of celibacy, 
it endeavored to include the lower 
orders of the clergy within its scope. 
Katramnus of Corvey also does not fail 
to point out that such was the incon- 
trovertible meaning of the Nicene 
canon, which in his time was univer- 
sally considered to refer to marriage. 

2 Siricii Epist. 2. — Innocent, ad Vic- 
tricium, ad Exuperium, &c. 



3 Lib. xvi. Cod. Theod. Tit. ii. 1. 44. 

* The learned and orthodox Zaccaria, 
concludes that the Nicene canon was 
only intended to forbid the irregular con- 
nexions with agapetae, whence he in- 
geniously argues that as the Council of 
Nicaea did not in any way forbid priestly 
marriage, the origin of the rule of celi- 
bacy is to be assigned to the Apostles. — 
Storia Polemica, p. 90. 

5 Pseudo-Concil. Koman. sub. Silvest. 
can. xix. (Migne's Patrol. VIII. 840.) 



56 



THE COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 



If the proof thus adduced be as convincing as it appears to me, 
the story of Paphnutius is not so important as to deserve the amount 
of controversy that has been expended upon it, and a brief reference 
is all that seems necessary. Socrates and Sozomen relate that while 
the canons of the council were under consideration, some of the 
fathers desired to introduce one interdicting all intercourse between 
those in orders and their wives. Whereupon Paphnutius, an Egyp- 
tian bishop, protested against the heavy burden to be thus imposed 
upon the clergy, quoting the well-known declaration of St. Paul to 
the Hebrews respecting the purity of the marriage-bed. The influ- 
ence of St. Paphnutius was great, for he was a confessor of peculiar 
sanctity ; the loss of his right eye bore testimony to the severity 
of the persecutions which he had endured, and his immaculate 
chastity, preserved from boyhood in a monastery, rendered his motives 
and his impartiality on the subject unimpeachable. The bishops, 
who had been on the point of accepting the proposed canon, were 
convinced, and the project was abandoned. 1 

If this account be true, it of course follows that the third canon 
has no bearing on the wives of ecclesiastics, and that the enforcement 
of celibacy dates from a later period than that of the council. Ac- 
cordingly, when the Nicene canon was found necessary to give 
authority to the rule, it became requisite to discredit the story of 
Paphnutius. The first attempt to do this, which has come under 
my observation, occurred during the fierce contentions aroused by 
the efforts of Gregory VII. to restore the almost forgotten law of 
celibacy. Bernald of Constance has left a record of a discussion 
held by him in 1076 with Alboin, a zealous defender of sacerdotal 
marriage, in which the authenticity of the story is hotly contested. 2 
Bernald' s logic may be condensed into the declaration that he consid- 
ered it much more credible that Sozomen was in error than that so holy 
a man as St. Paphnutius could have been guilty of such blasphemy. 
No reason whatever was vouchsafed when Gregory VII. caused the 
story to be condemned in the Synod of Rome of 1079. 3 In spite 
of this, Pius IV., in 1564, admitted its authenticity in his epistle to 
the German princes who had requested of him the concession of 



1 Socrat. H. E. Lib. I. c. 11.— Sozo- 
men. H. E. Lib. i. c. 22. 

2 Bernald. Altercat. de Incont. Sa- 
cerd. 



3 Monumenta Gregoriana (Migne' 
Patrol T. CXLYIII. p. 1378). 



STORY OF PAPHNUTIUS. 



57 



sacerdotal marriage. 1 Later writers, from Bellarmine down, have, 
however, entered into elaborate arguments to prove its impossibility. 
They rest their case principally on the assertion of the existence of 
celibacy as a rule anterior to the council, and on its enforcement 
afterwards ; on the fact that Socrates and Sozomen nourished a little 
more than a century after the council, and that they are therefore 
untrustworthy; and that the name of St. Paphnutius does not ap- 
pear in the acts of the council. To the first of these objections the 
preceding pages afford, I think, a sufficient answer ; to the second it 
can only be replied that we must be content with the best testimony 
attainable, and that there is none better than that of the two his- 
torians, whose general truthfulness and candor are acknowledged; 2 
and to the third it may be remarked that of the 318 bishops present, 
but 222 affixed their signatures to the acts, while Rufinus and Theo- 
doret both expressly assert that Paphnutius was present. 3 That the 
statement was not discredited until controversialists found it desirable 
to do so, is shown by its retention in the full account of the pro- 
ceedings of the council by Gelasius of Cyzicus, in the fifth century, 
and also by its repetition in the "Historia Tripartita," a condensa- 
tion of the narratives of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, compiled 
in the sixth century by Cassiodorus, whose irreproachable orthodoxy 
would hardly have permitted him to give it currency if it had then 
been considered as blasphemous as the writers of the eleventh century 
would have us believe. In fact, the learned and orthodox Christian 
Wolff, in his great work on the Councils, rejects as trifling the asser- 
tion that the story of Paphnutius is fictitious. His theory of the 
whole matter is that the western church endeavored to subject the 
eastern to its views on the celibacy required of the priesthood ; that 
the effort failed, in consequence of the opposition of Paphnutius, and 
that the canon adopted had reference merely to the scandals of the 
Agapetse. 4 



1 Verum quidem est, quod ob minis- 
trorura Dei defectum in primitiva eccle- 
sia conjugati admittebantur.ad sacerdo- 
tium, ut ex canonibus apostolorum et 
Paphnutii responso liquet, et in Concilio 
Nicaeno. — (Respons.Pii. IV. ap. Le Plat, 
Concil. Trident. Monument. VI. 337.) 

2 Sed prse caeteris omnibus Socrates 
et Sozomenus ac Theodoretus totius 
antiquitatis judicio celebrati sunt, qui 
ab iis temporibus exorsi, in quibus 
Eusebius scribendi finem fecerat, ad 



Theodosii junioris tempora opus suum 
perduxerunt. — H. Valesii Prsefat. 

3 Theodoret. Hist. Eccles. Lib. i. c. 7. 
So also Rufinus (Hist. Eccles. Lib. x. 

c. 4) : " Euit pneterea in illo concilio 
et Paphnutius homo Dei, episcopus 
JSgypti partibus, confessor, etc.," but 
he makes no allusion to the incident 
related by Socrates and Sozomen. 

4 Act. Concil. ISTicsen. n. xxxii. (Har- 
duin. I. 438).— Hist. Tripart. n.13.— 
Chr. Lupi Opp. I. 239 (Venet. 1724). 



58 THE COUNCIL OF NIC^EA. 

Various indications have been collected by controversialists to 
show that for some time after the council of Nicaea no interference 
was attempted with married priests. Of these, one or two will suffice. 

St. Athanasius, whose orthodoxy it would not be prudent for any 
one to question, and whose appearance during his diaconate at the 
council of Nicsea first attracted general attention to his commanding 
abilities, has left us convincing testimony as to the perfect freedom 
allowed during his time to all classes of ecclesiastics. An Egyptian 
monk named Dracontius had been elected to an episcopate, and hesi- 
tated to accept the dignity lest its duties should prove incompatible 
with the fulfilment of his vows. To remove these scruples, Athana- 
sius addressed him an epistle containing various arguments, among 
which was the declaration that in his new sphere of action he would 
find no difficulty in carrying out whatever rules he might prescribe 
for himself. "Many bishops," said the Saint, "have not contracted 
matrimony, while on the other hand, monks have become fathers. 
Again, we see bishops who have children, and monks who take no 
thought of having posterity." 1 The tenor of the whole passage is 
such as to show that no laws had yet been enacted to control indi- 
vidual action in such matters, and while rigid asceticism was largely 
practised, it was to be admired as the result of private conviction, 
and not as mere enforced submission to an established rule. 

Testimony equally unequivocal is afforded by the case of St. 
Gregory Theologos, Bishop of Nazianzum. He relates that his 
father, who was likewise a St. Gregory Bishop of Nazianzum, was 
converted about the period of the Nicene council, and was shortly 
afterwards admitted to the priesthood and created bishop. His 
mother, St. Nonna, prayed earnestly for male issue, saw her future 
son St. Gregory in a prophetic vision, and devoted him, before his 
birth, to the service of God. That this occurred after his father's 
admission to orders is shown by the address which he represents the 
latter as making to him, "I have passed more years in offering the 
sacrifice than measure your whole life," 2 while the birth of a younger 
son, Caesarius, shows that conjugal relations continued undisturbed. 
St. Gregory evidently felt that neither shame nor irregularity attached 
to his birth during the sacred ministry of his father. 



1 Epist. ad Dracontium. 

2 OVTCU TOGOVTOV kKjUe/LLETprjKag ftlOV, 

'Oooq 6tr]?i-&e dvcicov hfioc xpovog. 
Baronius labors hard to break the 
force of this assertion, but his arguments 



seem to me successfully controverted 
by Calixtus. (De Conjug. Cleric. Ed. 
1783, pp. 261-74.) The chapter devoted 
to this question by Zaccaria (Storia 
Polem. Lib. i. cap. vii.) is an example 
of desperate special pleading. 



IV. 
LEGISLATION. 



Thus far the progress of asceticism had been the result of moral 
influence alone. Those who saw in the various forms of abstinence 
and mortification the only path to salvation, and those who may have 
felt that worldly advantages of power or reputation would compensate 
them for the self-inflicted restrictions which they underwent, already 
formed a numerous body in the church, but as yet had not acquired 
the numerical ascendency requisite to enable them to impose upon 
their brethren the rules which they had adopted for their own 
guidance. The period was one of transition, and for sixty years 
after the council of Nicsea there was doubtless a struggle for su- 
premacy not perhaps the less severe because at this late date we can 
but dimly trace its outlines amid the records of the fierce Arian con- 
troversy which constitutes the ecclesiastical history of the time, and 
which absorbed the attention of writers almost to the exclusion of 
everthing else. 

The first triumph of the ascetic party was in establishing recog- 
nized restrictions on those who had voluntarily assumed vows of 
celibacy. With them, at least, the case was clear. Aspiring to no 
rank in the church, they simply dedicated themselves to God, and 
pledged themselves to lives of abstinence. Their backsliding caused 
scandal to the church, which, if it were held responsible in the eyes 
of men for their conduct, must necessarily assume the power to con- 
trol their mode of life, while the fact of simply holding them to the 
performance of vows solemnly undertaken could not reasonably be 
regarded as an arbitrary stretch of authority. These voluntary vows, 
which speedily led to the establishment of the vast fabric of mona- 
chism will form the subject of a subsequent section, and need not be 
further alluded to here. 

Another move in the direction of asceticism was the prohibition 



60 



LEGISLATION" 



by the Council of Laodicea in 352 of women serving as priests or 
presiding over the churches. 1 Although in later Judaism the Temple 
service was confined to men, the examples of Deborah and Huldah 
show that in earlier times women were considered as capable of 
inspiration and were sometimes revered as prophets; the Gentiles, 
among whom the infant churches were founded, had priestesses almost 
everywhere actively employed in the duties of worship and sacrifice; 
and it would have been strange if women, to whom the propagation 
of the Gospel was so greatly owing, had not been sometimes admitted 
to the function of conducting the simple services of the primitive 
church. We learn from St. Paul that Phoebe was a deacon (Mkovo^ 
of the church at Cenchrea, 2 and the canon of Laodicea shows that 
until the middle of the fourth century they still occasionally occu- 
pied recognized positions in the active ministry of the church. They 
could not have been numerous, or the references to them in the 
history of the period would have been more frequent, and the enforce- 
ment of their disability for divine service would have required con- 
stant repetition in the canons of the general and local synods; but 
unquestionably the growth of Mariolatry and the adoration of female 
saints would have sufficed to prevent the inconsistency of regarding 
women as absolutely unfitted for any function in public worship, had 
it not been for the rising influence of asceticism, which demanded 
the separation of the sexes, and insisted upon an artificial purity in 
all concerned in the ministry of the altar. Even as late as the tenth 
century, so good a celibatarian as Atto of Vercelli was perfectly will- 
ing to assert that in the early church, when the laborers were few, 
women were admitted to share in the ceremonies of divine worship. 3 
Still, as yet, the secular clergy were at liberty to follow the dictates 
of their own consciences, and if an attempt was made to erect the 
necessity of ascetic abstinence into an article of either faith or disci- 



1 Concil. Laodicens. can. xi. 

2 Komans, xvi. 1. The number of 
women alluded to by St. Paul in this 
chapter shows how active they were in 
disseminating the faith. Junia he dig- 
nifies with the title of Apostle. 

3 Atton. Vercell. Epist. viii. — Epi- 
phanius (Hseres. lxxix) denies that 
women had ever been permitted to rise 
beyond the diaconate, and asserts that 
their functions in that grade were 
simply to render to women such offices 



as decency forbade to men. In the 
West, the ordination of deaconesses 
was prohibited by Concil. Arausican. 
I. ann. 441 can. xxvi. ; Concil. Epao- 
nens. ann. 513 can. xxi., and Concil. 
Aurelianens. II. ann. 533 can. xviii., 
on account of disorders arising through 
the fragility of the sex, as was perhaps 
not unnatural, after the adoption of 
enforced celibacy. It was probably for 
the sake of order that St. Paul forbade 
women from teaching or asking ques- 
tions in church (I Cor. xiv. 34, 35 ; 
I. Tim. ii. 11, 12), 



THE COUNCIL OF GANGRA. 



61 



pline, the church was prompt to stamp it with the seal of unequivocal 
reprobation. Eustathius, Bishop of Sebastia, in Cappadocia, himself 
the son of the Bishop of Cappadocian Csesarea, Eulalius, carried his 
zeal for purity to so great an excess that his exaggerated notions of 
the inferiority of the married state trenched closely upon Manichseism, 
although his heretical rejection of canonical fasting showed that on 
other points he was bitterly opposed to the tenets of that obnoxious 
sect. His horror of matrimony went so far as to lead him to the 
dogma that married people were incapable of salvation ; he forbade 
the offering of prayer in houses occupied by them ; and he declared 
that the blessings and sacraments of priests living with their wives 
were to be rejected, and their persons treated with contempt. 1 

There were not wanting those to whom even these extreme opinions 
were acceptable, and Eustathius speedily accumulated around him a 
host of devotees whose proselyting zeal threatened a stubborn heresy. 
The excesses attributed to their inability to endure the practical opera- 
tion of their leader's doctrines may be true, or may be merely the 
accusations which are customarily disseminated when it becomes 
necessary to invest schismatics with odium. Be this as it may, the 
orthodox clergy felt the importance of promptly repressing opinions 
which, although at variance with the creed of the church, were yet 
dangerously akin to the extreme views of those who were regarded as 
pre-eminently holy. Eulalius, the father of the heresiarch, himself 
presided at a local synod held at Csesarea, and condemned his son. 
This did not suffice to repress the heresy, and about the year 362 a 
provincial council was assembled at Gangra, where fifteen bishops, 
among whom was Eulalius, pronounced their verdict on Eustathius 
and his misguided followers, and drew up a series of canons defining 
the orthodox belief on the questions involved. That they were re- 
ceived by the church as authoritative is evident from their being in- 
cluded in the collections of Dionysius and Isidor. These canons 



1 Declaratum est enim hos eosdem 
nuptias accusare et docere quod nullus 
in conjugali positus gradu spem habeat 
apud Deum. ... In domibus conju- 
gatorum nee orationes quidem debere 
celebrari, persuasisse in tantum ut eas- 
dem fieri vetent. . . . Presbyteros vero 
qui matrimonia contraxerunt sperni 
debere dicunt, nee sacramenta quae ab 
eis conficiuntur, attingi. — Concil. Gan- 
grens. Prooem. 

So also Socrates — " Benedictionem 
presbyteri habentis uxorem, quam lege 



cum esset laicus duxisset, tanquam 
scelus declinandum pnecepit." — Hist. 
Eccles. Lib. n. c. 33. 

After tbe specific condemnation of 
this latter doctrine by the undoubtedly 
orthodox council of Gangra, it is some- 
what remarkable to see it enunciated 
and erected into a law of the church by 
Gregory VII. in his internecine con- 
flict with the married priests. Thus 
the heresy of one age becomes the re- 
ceived and adopted faith of another. 



62 



LEGISLATION 



anathematize all who refuse the sacraments of a married priest, and 
who hold that he cannot officiate on account of his marriage ; also 
those who, priding themselves on their professed virginity, arrogantly 
despise their married brethren, and who hold that the duties of wed- 
lock are incompatible with salvation. 1 The whole affords a singularly 
distinct record of the doctrines accepted at this period, showing that 
there was no authority admitted for imposing restrictions of any kind 
on the married clergy. It probably was an effort on the part of the 
conservatives of the church to restrain their more progressive brethren, 
and they no doubt gladly availed themselves of the wild theories of 
Eustathius to stigmatize the extravagances which were daily becoming 
more influential. At the same time, they were careful to shield them- 
selves behind a qualified concession to the ascetic spirit of the period, 
for in an epilogue they apologetically declare their humble admiration 
of virginity, and their belief that pious continence is most acceptable 
to God. 2 

In little more than twenty years after this emphatic denunciation 
of all interference with married priests, we find the first absolute com- 
mand addressed to the higher orders of the clergy to preserve inviolate 
celibacy. So abrupt a contrast provokes an inquiry into its possible 
causes, as no records have reached us exhibiting any special reasons 
for the change. 

While the admirers of ascetic virginity became louder and more 
enthusiastic in their praises of that blessed condition, it is fair to 
presume that they were daily more sensible of a lower standard of 
morality in the ministers of the altar, and that their susceptibilities 
were more deeply shocked by the introduction and growth of abuses. 
While the church was kept purified by the fires of persecution, it 
offered few attractions for the worldly and ambitious. Its ministry 
was too dangerous to be sought except by the pure and zealous 
Christian, and there was little danger that pastors would err except 
from over-tenderness of conscience or unthinking ardor. When, how- 
ever, its temporal position was incalculably improved by its domina- 



1 Concil. Gangrens. c. 4. — Si quis de- 
cernit presbyterum conjugatum tan- 
quam occasione nuptiarum quod offerre 
non debeat, et ab ejus oblatione ideo 
se abstinet, anathema sit. — I give the 
Isidorian version adopted by Gratian, 
Dist. xxviii. c. 15, and by Burchard, 
Lib. in. 75. That of Dionysius Exi- 
guus is somewhat different. 



Can. 10. — Si quis propter Deum vir- 
ginitatem professus in conjugio positos 
per arrogantiam vituperaverit, anathe- 
ma sit. — Can. 1 and 9 are directed 
against those who condemn marriage, 
and teach that it affords no chance of 
heaven. 

2 Concil. Gangrens. Epilog. 



OBJECTS TO BE GAINED BY CELIBACY. 



63 



tion throughout the empire, it became the avenue through which 
ambition might attain its ends, while its wealth held out prospects of 
idle self-indulgence to the slothful and the sensual. A neAv class of 
men, dangerous alike from their talents or their vices, would thus 
naturally find their way into the fold, and corruption, masked under 
the semblance of austerest virtue, or displayed with careless cynicism, 
would not be long in penetrating into the Holy of Holies. Immo- 
rality must have been flagrant when, in 370, the temporal power felt 
the necessity of interfering by a law of the Emperor Valentinian 
which denounced severe punishment on ecclesiastics who visited the 
houses of widows and virgins. 1 When an increasing laxity of morals 
thus threatened to overcome the purity of the church, it is not sur- 
prising that the advocates of asceticism should have triumphed over 
the more moderate and conservative party, and that they should im- 
prove their victory by seeking a remedy for existing evils in such 
laws as should render the strictest continence imperative on all who 
entered into holy orders. They might reasonably argue that if 
nothing else were gained, the change would at least render the life 
of the priest less attractive to the vicious and the sensual, and that 
the rigid enforcement of the new rules would elevate the character of 
the church by preventing such wolves from seeking a place among 
the sheep. If by such legislation they only added fresh fuel to the 
flame ; if they heightened immorality by hypocrisy and drove into 
vagabond licentiousness those who would perhaps have been content 
with lawful marriage, they only committed an error which has ever been 
too common with earnest men of one idea to warrant special surprise. 
Another object may not improbably have entered into the motives 
of those who introduced the rule. The church was daily receiving 
vast accessions of property from the pious zeal of its wealthy 
members, the death-bed repentance of despairing sinners, and the 
munificence of emperors and prefects, while the effort to procure 
the inalienability of its possessions dates from an early period. 2 Its 
acquisitions, both real and personal, were of course exposed to much 



1 Lib. xvi. Cod. Theod. Tit. ii. 1. 20. 

2 So great was the influx of wealth 
to the church from the pious legacies of 
the faithful that it became an evil of 
magnitude to the state, and in 370 a 
law of Yalentinian pronounced null and 
void all such testamentary provisions 
made by those under priestly influence 



(Lib. xyi. Cod. Theod. Tit. ii. 1. 20)— 
a provision repeated in 390 (Ibid. 1. 27) 
with such additional details as show its 
successful evasion during the interval. 
Godefroi, in his notes to these laws (T. 
VI. pp. 48-50, 60-64), has collected 
much curious matter bearing on the 
subject. 



64 LEGISLATION. 

greater risk of dilapidation when the ecclesiastics in charge of its 
widely scattered riches had families for whose provision a natural 
parental anxiety might be expected to override the sense of duty in 
discharging the trust confided to them. The simplest mode of avert- 
ing the danger might therefore seem to be to relieve the churchman 
of the cares of paternity, and, by cutting asunder all the ties of family 
and kindred, to bind him completely and forever to the church and 
to that alone. This motive, as we shall see, was openly acknowledged 
as a powerful one, in later times, and it no doubt served as an argu- 
ment of weight in the minds of those who urged and secured the 
adoption of the canon. 

It appears to me not unreasonable to suppose that all these various 
motives lent additional force to the zeal for the purity of the church, 
and to the undoubting belief in the necessity of perpetual celibacy, 
which impelled the popes, about the year 385, to issue the first defi- 
nite command imposing it as an absolute rule of discipline on the 
ministers of the altar. The question evidently was one which largely 
occupied the minds of men, and the conclusion was reached progres- 
sively. A Roman synod, to which the date of 384 is assigned, an- 
swered a series of interrogatories propounded by the bishops of Gaul, 
among which was one relating to the chastity of the priesthood. To 
this the response was rather argumentatory and advisory in its char- 
acter than imperative ; the continence of the higher grades of eccle- 
siastics was insisted on, but no definite punishment was ordered for 
its violation 1 — and no maxim in legislation is better understood than 
that a law without a penalty expressed is practically a dead letter. 
Allusion was made to previous efforts to enforce the observance in 
various churches ; surprise was expressed that light should be sought 
for on such a question — for the Gallic prelates had evidently been in 
doubt respecting it — and numerous reasons were alleged in a manner 
to show that the subject was as yet open to argument, and could not 
be assumed as proved or be decided by authority alone. These reasons 
may be briefly summed up as consisting of references to the well- 
known texts referred to in a previous section, together with a vague 
assertion of the opinion of the Fathers to the same effect. Allusion 
was made to the inconsistency of exhortations to virginity proceeding 
from those who themselves were involved in family cares and duties, 

1 Synod. Soman, ad Gallos Episc. | assigned. By some authorities it has 
Kespons. c. 3. — The date of this synod J been attributed to 398, and Hardouin 
is not certain, but the year mentioned suggests that it may even have been 
in the text is the earliest to which it is I held under Innocent I. 



DECRETAL OF SIRICIUS. 



65 



a reasonable view when we consider how much of ecclesiastical ma- 
chinery by this time turned on monachism ; and the necessity was 
urged of bishops, priests, and deacons preserving the purity requisite 
to fit them for the daily sacrifice of the altar and the ministration of 
the sacraments. This latter point was based upon the assumption of a 
similar abstinence being imposed by the old law on the Levites during 
their term of service in the Temple, and the example of the pagan 
priesthood was indignantly adduced to shame those who could enter- 
tain a sacrilegious doubt upon a matter so self-evident. 1 The con- 
clusion arrived at was definite, but, as I have already remarked, no 
means were suggested or commanded for its enforcement. 

Not many months later Pope Damasus died, but the cause was 
safe in the hands of his successor. Scarcely had Siricius ascended 
the pontifical throne, when, in 385, he addressed an epistle to 
Himerius, Archbishop of Tarragona, expressing his grief and indig- 
nation that the Spanish clergy should pay so little regard to the 
sanctity of their calling as to maintain relations with their wives. 
It is evident from the tenor of the decretal that Himerius had been 
unable to enforce the new discipline, and had appealed to Rome for 
assistance in breaking down the stubborn resistance which he had 
encountered, for allusion is made to some of the refractory who had 
justified themselves by the freedom of marriage allowed to the Levites 
under the old law, while others had expressed their regret and had 
declared their sin to be the result of ignorance. Siricius adopted a 
much firmer tone than his predecessor. He indulged in less elabora- 
tion of argument ; a few texts, more or less apposite ; an expression 
of wonder that the rule should be called in question ; a distinct asser- 
tion of its application to the three grades of bishops, priests, and 
deacons ; a sentence of expulsion on all who dared to offer resistance, 
and a promise of pardon for those who had offended through igno- 



1 " Certe idololatrae, ut impietates ex- 
erceant et dsemonibus immolent, impe- 
rant sibi continentiam muliebrem, et ab 
escis quoque se purgari volimt, et me 
interrogas si sacerdos Dei vivi spiritu- 
alia oblaturus sacrificia purgatus per- 
petuo debeat esse, an totus in carne 
carnis curam debeat facere ? ' ' 

If all the postulates be granted, the 
reasoning is unanswerable, and as the 
precedents of the Old Testament have 
been relied upon in all arguments since 
the time of Siricius, it may be worth 
while to refer to the caution of Ahime- 



lech before giving the shew-bread to 
David (I. Sam. 21) as one of the texts 
most constantly quoted, and to the resi- 
dence of Zacharias in the Temple dur- 
ing his term of ministration (Luke i. 
23), which was frequently instanced. 
These are certainly more germane to 
the matter than the linen breeches pro- 
vided for Aaron and his sons (Exod. 
xxviii. 42-3), by which the Venerable 
Bede assures us (De Tabernac. Lib. in. 
c. 9) " significatum esse sacerdotes Novi 
Testamenti aut virgines esse, aut con- 
tracta cum uxoribus foedera dissolvisse. ' ' 



66 



LEGISLATION 



ranee, allowing them to retain their positions as long as they ob- 
served complete separation from their wives, though even then they 
were pronounced incapable of all promotion — such was the first de- 
finitive canon, prescribing and enforcing sacerdotal celibacy, exhibited 
by the records of the church. 1 

The confident manner in which the law is thus laid down as incon- 
trovertible and absolute might almost make us doubt whether it were 
not older than the preceding pages have shown it to be, if Siricius 
had not confessed the weakness of the cause by adopting a very 
different tone within a year. In 386 he addressed the church of 
Africa, sending it certain canons adopted by a Roman synod. Of 
these the first eight relate to observances about which there was at 
that time no question, and they are expressed in the curtest and most 
decisive phraseology. The ninth canon is conceived in a spirit totally 
different. It persuades, exhorts, and entreats that the three orders 
shall preserve their purity ; it argues as to the propriety and necessity 
of the matter, which it supports by various texts, but it does not 
assume that the observance thus enjoined is even a custom, much less 
a law, of the church; it urges that the scandal of marriage be re- 
moved from the clergy, but it threatens no penalty for refusal. 2 
Siricius was too imperious and too earnest in all that he undertook 
for us to imagine that he would have adopted pleading and entreaty 
if he had felt that he possessed the right to command ; nor would he 
have condescended to beg for the removal of an opprobrium if he 
were speaking with all the authority of unquestioned tradition to 
enforce a canon which had become an unalterable part of ecclesias- 
tical discipline. 

It is observable that in these decretals no authority is quoted later 
than the Apostolic texts, which, as we have seen, have but little 
bearing on the subject. No canons of councils, no epistles of earlier 
popes, no injunctions of the Fathers are brought forward to strengthen 
the position assumed, whence the presumption is irresistible that 
none such existed, and we may rest satisfied that no evidence has 
been lost that would prove the pre-existence of the rule. 



1 Siricii Epist. i. c. 7. — It would seem 
from this decretal (cap. 8, 9, 10, 11) that 
even the rule excluding dig-ami was 
wholly neglected. Siricius further (cap. 
13) urges the admission of monks to 
holy orders, for the purpose of providing 
a priesthood vowed to chastity. 



2 Prseterea, quod dignum, pudicum 
et honestum est, suademus ut sacerdotes 
et levitse cum uxoribus suis non coeant, 
quia in ministerio divino quotidianis 
necessitatibus occupantur. . . Qua de 
re hortor, moneo, rogo, tollatur hoc op- 
probrium quod potest etiam jure gen- 
tilitas accusare. — Concil. Telensis. c. 9. 



V. 



ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 



Celibacy was but one of the many shapes in which the rapidly 
progressing sacerdotalism of Rome was overlaying religion with a 
multitude of formal observances. That which in earlier times had 
been the spontaneous expression of fervid zeal, or the joyful self- 
sacrifice of ardent asceticism, was thus changed into a law, bearing 
upon all alike, and taking no count of the individual idiosyncrasies 
which might render the burden too heavy for the shoulders of the 
less fiery though not less conscientious Christian. That it should 
meet with resistance was to be expected when we consider that the 
local independence of primitive times had not as yet been crushed 
under the rapidly growing preponderance of the Roman see. In 
fact energetic protests were not wanting, as well as the more perplex- 
ing stubbornness of passive resistance. 

St. Ambrose admits that although the necessity of celibacy was 
generally acknowledged, still, in many of the remoter districts, there 
were to be found those who neglected it, and who justified themselves 
by ancient custom, relying on precautions to purify themselves for 
their sacred ministry. 1 In this he gives countenance to the tradition 
of the Leonistse, simple Christians whose refusal to adapt themselves 
to the sacerdotalism, which was daily becoming more rigorous and 
indispensable, caused their expulsion from Rome, and who, taking 
refuge in the recesses of the Cottian Alps, endeavored to preserve 
the unadulterated faith of earlier times in the seclusion and privation 
of exile. 

All who revolted against the increasing oppression of the hierarchy 
were not, however, content to bury themselves in solitude and silence, 



1 Quod eo non prgeterii quia in pleris- 
que abditioribus locis, cum ministerium 
gererent, vel etiain sacerdotium, filios 
susceperent, et id tanquam usu veteri 



defendunt, quando per intervallo dierum 
sacrificium deferebatur. — Ambros. de 
Officiis Lib. I. c. 50. 



68 



ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY 



and heresiarchs sprang up who waged a bold but unequal contest. 
Bonosus, Jovinian, and Vigilantius are the names which have reached 
us as the most conspicuous leaders in the unsuccessful attempt to 
turn back the advancing spirit of the age, and of these Jovinian is 
the foremost figure. Bonosus, who was Bishop of Sardica, acquired 
a peculiarly sinister notoriety, for, in his opposition to the ascetic 
spirit, he adopted a heresy of Tertullian and Photinus, and assailed 
one of the chief arguments of the admirers of celibacy by denying 
the perpetual virginity of the Virgin ; whence his followers acquired 
the euphonious title of Bonosiacs. 1 For this he was denounced by 
Pope Siricius with all the vehemence which doctrines so sacrilegious 
were calculated to excite, 2 and his followers were duly condemned by 
the Council of Capua in 389, while the tireless pen of St. Jerome 
was called into requisition to refute errors so unpardonable. 3 Not- 
withstanding this they continued to flourish, for an epistle of Inno- 
cent I. to Lawrence, Bishop of Segna, proves that the error was 



1 Tertullian has no scruple in asserting 
— " Et Christum quidum virgo enixa 
est, semel nuptura post partum." (De 
Monog. c. 8). This belief was founded 
on the words of Matthew (i. 25), " nal 
ovk iyivoanev avrrjv eug 6v erensTov vibv 
avTTJQ rbv Trpororonov, nal lua^eae to bvofia 
avrov 'irjcovv." — " And he knew her not 
till she had brought forth her first-born 
son; and he called his name Jesus." 
The restrictive "till" and the charac- 
terization of Jesus as the first-born of 
the Virgin (though the latter is omitted 
in the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS.) are 
certainly not easily explicable on any 
other supposition ; nor is the difficulty 
lessened by the various explanations 
concerning the family of Joseph, by 
which such expressions as ?) fiijrrjp avrov 
ml oi hdeXtyoi avrov — fratres et mater 
ejus (Marc. in. xxxi.), or the enumer- 
ation of his brothers and sisters in Matt. 
xin. 55-6, Mark vi. 3, or the phrase 
lanwftov rbv ade?t(pbv rov nvpiov — Jacobum 
fratrem Domini (Galat. 1. 19) — are taken 
by commentators in a spiritual sense, 
or are eluded by transferring to the 
Greek a Hebrew idiom which confounds 
brothers with cousins. In the Consti- 
tutiones Apostolicse occurs a passage — 
" Et ego Jacobus frater quidem Christi 
secundum earn em, servus autem tan- 
quam Dei ' ' — which seems to place it in 
an unmistakable light, if it be an ex- 



tract from some forgotten Gospel, 
although it may only reflect the opin- 
ions of the third century when the 
collection was written or compiled. 

The Bonosiacs were also sometimes 
called Hel vidians. — S. Augustin. de 
Haeresibus $ 84. — Isidor. Hispalens. 
Etymolog. Lib. viii. c. v. \ 57. 

In an age which was accustomed to 
such arguments as ' ' per mulierem culpa 
successit, per virginem salus evenit " 
(Kescript. Episcopp. ad Siricium), it is 
easy to appreciate the pious horror 
evoked by such blasphemous heresies. 

St. Clement of Alexandria alludes to 
a belief current in his day that after 
the Nativity the Virgin had to submit 
to an inspection ab obstetrice to prove 
her purity (Stromat. Lib. vii.) — a story 
which continued to trouble the ortho- 
dox until the seventeenth century. 

The Buddhists eluded all these trouble- 
some questions by making Queen Maya 
die seven days after the birth of Saky- 
amuni, and asserting that this was the 
case with the mothers of all the Bud- 
dhas.— Kgya Tch'er Eol P (Ed. Fou-a 
aux, p. 100). 

2 Epist. Siric. ap. Batthyani Legg. 
Eccles. Hungar. T. I. p. 210. 

3 Hieron. de Perpet. Virgin. B. Ma- 
riae adv. Helvidium. 



JOVINIAN. 



69 



openly taught on the eastern shores of the Adriatic in the early part 
of the fifth century; 1 in 443 the Council of Aries shows their exist- 
ence in France by promising reconciliation to those who should 
manifest proper repentance, and that of Orleans as late as 538 still 
contains an allusion to them. 2 The belief even extended to Arabia, 
where a sect professing it is stigmatized by Epiphanius as Antidi- 
comarianitarians, whose conversion that worthy bishop endeavored to 
secure by a long epistle, in which his labored explanations of the 
stubborn text of Matthew are hardly more convincing than his 
hearty objurgations of the blasphemous dogma, or his illustrative 
comparison of the Virgin to a lioness bearing but one whelp. 3 

While Jovinian shared in this particular the error of Bonosus and 
Helvidius, he did not attach undue importance to it. More practi- 
cally inclined, his heresy consisted principally in denying the efficacy 
of celibacy, and this he maintained in Rome itself, with more zeal 
than discretion. Siricius caused his condemnation and that of his 
associates in a synod held about the year 390, 4 and succeeded in 
driving him to Milan, where he had many proselytes. There was no 
peace for him there. A synod held under the auspices of St. Am- 
brose bears testimony to the wickedness of his doctrines and to the 
popular clamor raised against him, and the wanderer again set forth 
on his weary pilgrimage. 6 Deprived of refuge in the cities, he dis- 
seminated his tenets throughout the country, where ardent followers, 
in spite of contumely and persecution, gathered around him and con- 
ducted their worship in the fields and hamlets. The laws promul- 
gated about this time against heresy were severe and searching, and 
bore directly upon all who deviated from the orthodox formulas of 
the Catholic church, yet Jovinian braved them all. The outraged 



1 Epist. xx. 

2 Concil. Arelatens. II. can. 17. — 
Concil. Aurelian. III. can. 31. 

3 Panar. Hseres. 78. — At the time of 
the Reformation the Bonosiac heresy 
naturally was revived. In 1523, at the 
Diet of Nuremberg, the Papal orator 
accused Osiander "quod prsedicasset 
Beatam Virginem Mariam post Christi 
partum non mansisse Virginem " (Spal- 
atini Annal. ann. 1523), but Osiander 
found few followers. At the Colloquy 
of Poissy, in 1561, the learned Claude 
d'Espense, doctor of Sorbonne, in argu- 
ing that there were many things the 



authority of which rested solely on 
tradition, and yet which were admitted 
as undoubted by all parties, instanced 
" que la Yierge Marie demoura vierge 
apres l'enfantement, et plusieurs autres 
semblables par consequent; ce qui a 
este bailie de main en main par nos 
peres, ores qu'il ne soit escript, n'est 
pourtant moins certain et approuve que 
s'il estoit temoigne par l'Escripture " 
(Pierre de la Place, Liv. vn.). 

* Siricii PP. Epist. ii. 

6 Rescript. Episcopp. ad Siricium. 
(Harduin. Concil. I. 853.) 



70 



ENFOBCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 



church called upon its most unscrupulous polemic, St. Jerome, who 
indulged in the customary abuse which represented the schismatics 
as indulging in the grossest promiscuous licentiousness and Jovinian 
as teaching them that all things were permitted to those baptized in 
Christ, in contradiction to St. Augustin who admits the sobriety 
and virtue of Jovinian, in spite of his denying the efficacy of celi- 
bacy. 1 All this was insufficient to put down the stubborn schismatics, 
who maintained their faith until the church, wearied out with their 
obstinacy and unable to convert or to silence them, appealed to the 
secular power for more efficient assistance. Perhaps Jovinian 's long 
career of successful resistance may have emboldened him; perhaps 
his sect was growing numerous enough to promise protection; at all 
events, despite the imperial rescripts which shielded with peculiar 
care the Apostolic city from the presence of heretics, Jovinian in 
412 openly held assemblages of his followers in Rome, to the scandal 
of the faithful, and made at least sufficient impression to lead a 
number of professed virgins to abandon their vows and marry. 2 The 
complaints of the orthodox were heard by the miserable shadow who 
then occupied the throne of Augustus, and Honorius applied himself 
to the task of persecution with relentless zeal. Jovinian was scourged 
with a leaded thong and exiled to the rock of Boa, on the coast of 
Dalmatia, while his followers were hunted down, deported, and 
scattered among the savage islands of the Adriatic. 3 



Nor was this the only struggle. A wild shepherd lad named 
Vigilantius, born among the Pyrenean valleys, was fortunate enough 
to be the slave of St. Sulpicius Severus, Avhose wealth, culture, 
talents, and piety rendered him prominent throughout Southern Gaul. 
The earnest character of the slave attracted the attention of the 
master; education developed his powers; he was manumitted, and 
the people of his native Calagurris choose him for their priest. Sent 
by Sulpicius as bearer of letters to his friends St. Paulinus at Nola, 
and St. Jerome in his Bethlehem retreat, Vigilantius had the oppor- 
tunity of comparing the simple Christianity of his native mountains 



1 Hieron. adv. Jovin. 
Haeres. No. lxxxii. 



-Augustin. de 



2 Augustin. Betractt. n. xxii. 1. 

3 Lib. xvi. Cod. Theod. Tit. v. 1. 53. 
It is generally assumed from this law 
that Jovinian lived until 412. An ex- 



pression of St. Jerome, however, (adv. 
Vigilant, cap. i.) would seem to show 
that he was already dead in 406, and 
critics have suggested either that there 
is an error in the date of the law or 
that another heresiarch is referred to. 



VIGILANTIUS. 



71 



with the splendid pageantry of Rome, the elegant retirement of Nola, 
and the heated controversialism which agitated the asceticism of 
Bethlehem. Notwithstanding the cordiality of their first acquaint- 
ance, his residence with Jerome was short. Both were too earnestly 
dogmatic in their natures for harmony to exist between the primitive 
Cantabrian shepherd and the fierce apostle of Buddhist and Mazdean 
Christianity, who devoted his life to reconciling the doctrines of the 
Latin church with the practices of Manichseism. Brief friendship 
ended in a quarrel, and Vigilantius extended his experiences by a 
survey of Egypt, where the vast hordes of Nitrian anchorites were 
involved in civil strife over the question of Origenism. Returning 
through Italy, he tarried in Milan and among the Alps, where he 
found the solution of his doubts and the realization of his ideas in 
the teaching of Jovinian. He had left Gaul a disciple ; he returned 
to it a missionary, prepared to do battle with sacerdotalism in all its 
forms. Not only did he deny the necessity of celibacy, but he pro- 
nounced it to be the fertile source of impurity, and in his zeal for 
reform he swept away fasting and maceration, he ridiculed the adora- 
tion of relics, and pronounced the miracles wrought at their altars to be 
the work of demons; he objected to the candles and incense around the 
shrines, to prayers for the dead, and to the oblations of the faithful. 1 
No doubt the decretals of Siricius had rendered compulsory the 
celibacy of the priesthood throughout Gaul and Spain. The ma- 
chinery of the hierarchy may readily have stifled open opposition, 
however frequent may have been the secret infractions of the rule. 
This may perhaps have contributed to the success of Vigilantius. 
Even his former master, St. Sulpicius Severus, and St. Exuperius, 
Bishop of Toulouse, were inclined to favor his reforms. That they 
spread with dangerous rapidity throughout Gaul from south to north 
is shown by the fact that in 404 Victricius, Bishop of Rouen, and in 
405 St. Exuperius of Toulouse applied to Innocent I. for advice as 
to the manner in which they should deal with the new heresy. It 
also counted numerous adherents throughout Spain, among whom 
even some bishops were enumerated. The alarm was promptly 



1 Exortus est subito Vigilantius, seii 
verius Dormitantius, qui immundo 
spiritu pugnat contra Christi spiritum, 
et martyrum neget sepulchra vene- 
randa, dammandas dicat esse vigilias ; 
nunquam nisi in Pascha alleluia can- 
tandum ; continentiam haeresim ; pudi- 



citiam libidinis seminarium. Et quo- 
modo Euphorbus in Pythagora renatus 
esse perhibetur, sic in isto Joviniani 
mens prava surrexit ; ut et in illo et in 
hoc diaboli respondere cogamur in- 
sidiis. — Hieron. adv. Vigilant, c. 1. 



72 



ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 



sounded, and the enginery of the church was brought to bear upon 
the hardy heretic. The vast reputation and authority of Jerome 
lent force to the coarse invective with which he endeavored to over- 
whelm his whilom acquaintance, and though the nickname of Dormi- 
tantius which he bestowed on Vigilantius was a sarcasm neither very 
severe nor very refined, the disgusting exaggeration of his adversary's 
tenets in which he as usual indulged had doubtless its destined effect. 1 
Pope Innocent was not backward in asserting the authority of Rome 
and the inviolable nature of the canon. In his epistle to Victricius, 
he repeated the decretal of Siricius, but in a somewhat more positive 
form ; 2 while in the following year (405) he confirmed the vacillating 
faith of Exuperius by declaring that any violation of the strictest 
celibacy on the part of priest or deacon subjects the offender to the 
deprivation of his position. 3 As in the previous effort of Siricius, 
however, ignorance is admitted as an excuse, entitling him who can 
plead it to retain his grade without hope of preferment — and the test 
of this ignorance is held to be the canon of 385. This latter point 
is noteworthy, for it is a tacit confession of the novelty of the rule, 
although Innocent labored at great length to prove both its antiquity 
and necessity from the well-known texts of St. Paul and the Levitical 
observances. Yet no intermediate authority was quoted, and punish- 
ment was only to be inflicted on those who could be proved to have 
seen the decretal of Siricius. 

The further career of Vigilantius and his sectaries is lost in the 
darkness and confusion attendant upon the ravages of the Alans and 
Vandals who overran Gaul during the following year. We only 
know that Sulpicius and Exuperius, frightened by the violence of 



1 Proh nefas ! episcopos sui sceleris 
dicitur habere consortes : si tamen 
episcopi nominandi sunt qui non ordi- 
nant diaconos nisi prius uxores duxe- 
rint; nulli ccelibi credentes pudicitiam, 
immo ostendentes quam sancte vivant 
qui niale de omnibus suspicantur; et 
nisi prsegnantes uxores viderint cleri- 
corum, infantesque de ulnis matrum 
vagientes, Christi sacramenta non 
tribuant. . . . Hoc docuit Dormitan- 
tiuSj libidini frsena permittens, et na- 
turalem carnis ardorem, qui in ado- 
lescentia plerumque fervescit, suis 
hortatibus duplicans, immo extin- 
guens coitu fceminarum, ut nihil sit 
quo distemus a porcis, etc. — Hieron. 
adv. Vigilant, c. 2. 



2 Praeterea quod dignum, pudicum 
et honestum est, tenere ecclesia om- 
nino debet, ut sacerdotes et levitse 
cum uxoribus non misceantur . . . 
Maxime ut vetus regula hoc habet ut 
quisquis corruptus baptizatus cleri- 
cus esse voluisset, spondeat uxorem 
omnino non ducere. — Innocent. PP. I. 
Epist. ii. c. 9, 10. 

3 Ut incontinentes in officiis talibus 
positi, omni ecclesiastico honore pri- 
ventur, nee admittantur ad tale min- 
isterium, quod sola continentia opor- 
tet impleri. — As for those who could 
be proved to have seen the epistle of 
Siricius — ' ' illi sunt modis omnibus 
submovendi." — Innocent. PP. I. Epist. 
iii. c. 1. 



THE AFRICAN CHURCH. 



73 



Jerome and the authority of Innocent, abandoned their protege, and 
we can presume that, during the period of wild disorder which fol- 
lowed the irruption of the Barbarians, what little protection Rome 
could afford was too consoling to the afflicted churches for them to 
risk its withdrawal by resisting on any point the daily increasing 
pretensions of the Apostolic See to absolute command. 1 

The victory was won, for with the death of Vigilantius and Jovinian 
ended the last organized and acknowledged attempt to stay the prog- 
ress of celibacy in the Latin church, until centuries later, when the 
regulation was already too ancient and too well supported by tradition 
and precedent to be successfully called in question. 



In Africa we find no trace of open resistance to the introduction 
of the rule, though time was evidently required to procure its enforce- 
ment. We have seen that Siricius, in 386, addressed an appeal to 
the African bishops. To this they responded by holding a council 
in which they agreed " conscriptione quadam" that chastity should 
be preserved by the three higher orders. This apparently was not 
conclusive, for in 390 another council was held in which Aurelius, 
Bishop of Carthage, again introduced the subject. He recapitulated 
their recent action, urged that the teaching of the Apostles and 
ancient usage required the observance of the rule, and obtained the 
assent of his brother prelates to the separation from their wives of 
those who were concerned in administering the sacraments. 2 The 
form of these proceedings shows that it was an innovation, requiring 
deliberation and the assent of the ecclesiastics present, not a simple 
affirmation of a traditional and unalterable point of discipline, and, 
moreover, no penalty is mentioned for disobedience. Little respect, 
probably, was paid to the new rule. The third and fourth councils 
of Carthage, held in 397 and 398, passed numerous canons relating 
to discipline, prescribing minutely the qualifications and duties of 
the clergy, and of the votaries of the monastic profession. The 
absence from among these canons of any allusion to enforced celibacy 
would therefore appear to prove that it was still left to the conscience 



1 The observance of the rule and 
its effects are well illustrated in the 
story of Urbicus, Bishop of Clermont, 
and his unhappy wife, as naively re- 
lated by Gregory of Tours (Hist. 
Franc. L. i. c. 44). 



2 Ab universis episcopis dictum est : 
Omnibus placet, ut episcopi, presbyteri 
et diaconi, vel qui sacramenta con- 
trectant, pudicitise custodes etiam ab 
uxoribus se abstineant. — Concil. Car- 
thag. II. can. 2 (Cod. Eccles. African, 
can. 3). 



74 



ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 



of the individual. If this be so, the triumph of the sacerdotal party 
was not long delayed, as might be expected from the rising influence 
and authority of St. Augustin, whose early Manichaeism led him, 
after his conversion, to be one of the most enthusiastic admirers and 
promoters of austere asceticism. We may not unreasonably assume 
that it was through his prompting that his friend St. Aurelius, at the 
fifth council of Carthage in 401, proposed a canon, which was adopted, 
ordering the separation of the married clergy of the higher grades 
from their wives, under pain of deprivation of office. 1 As before, 
the form of the canon shows it to be an innovation. 

That the rule was positively adopted and frequently submitted to 
is shown by St. Augustin, who, in his treatise against second mar- 
riages, states that, in arguing with those desirous of entering upon 
those unhallowed unions, he was accustomed to strengthen his logic 
by citing the continence of the clergy, who, however unwillingly 
they had in most cases been forced to undertake the burden, still, by 
the aid of God, were enabled to endure it to the end. 2 Yet it is 
evident that its enforcement was attended with many difficulties and 
much opposition, for, twenty years later, at another council of Car- 
thage, we find Faustinus, the Papal Legate, proposing that the three 
higher orders shall be separated from their wives, to which the fathers 
of the council somewhat evasively replied that those who were con- 



1 Aurelius episcopus dixit : Addi- 
mus fratres carissimi preeterea, cuni de 
quorundam clericormn, quamvis lec- 
torum, erga uxores proprias inconti- 
nentia referretur, placuit, quod et in 
diversis conciliis firmatum est, ut sub- 
diaconi, qui sacra mysteria contrec- 
tant, et diaconi et presbyteri, sed et 
episcopi, secundum priora statuta 
etiam ab uxoribus se contineant, ut 
tanquam non babentes videantur esse : 
quod nisi fecerint, ab ecclesiastico 
removeantur officio. Ceteros autem 
clericos ad boc non cogi, nisi maturiori 
setate. Ab universo concilio dictum 
est : Quae vestra sanctitas est juste 
moderata, et sancta et Deo placita 
sunt, confirmamus. — Concil. Carthag. 
V. c. 3 (Cod. Eccles. Afric. c. 25). 

Tbe councils thus alluded to are 
probably tbe Eoman Synods under 
Damasus and Siricius. 

I give the version most favored by 
modern critics, but it should be ob- 
served that there is doubt concerning 
several important points. In the older 
collections of councils (e. g. Surius, 



Ed. 1567, T. I. p. 519-20) the canon 
indicates no compulsion for the orders 
beneath the diaconate, commencing 
" Placuit episcopos et presbyteros et 
diaconos" and ending " Cseteros autem 
clericos ad hoc non cogi sed secundum 
uniuscuj usque ecclesiae consuetudinem 
observari debere," and this has proba- 
bility in its favor, since the subdiaconate 
was not included in the restriction for 
nearly two centuries after this period, 
and the lower grades were never sub- 
jected to the rule. 

The expression ' ' secundum priora 
statuta" is probably the emendation of 
a copyist puzzled by the obscurity of 
"secundum propria statuta." which 
latter is the reading given by Dio- 
nysius Exiguus. That it is the correct 
one is rendered almost certain by the 
Greek version, which is Kara rove Idiovg 
opov^ (Calixt. Conjug. Cleric, p. 350) 
.which would seem to leave the matter 
very much to the preexisting customs 
of the individual churches. 

2 De Adulterin. Conjug. Lib. n. c. 20. 



GRADUAL OBEDIENCE OF WESTERN EUROPE. 



75 



cerned in the ministry of the altar should be chaste in all things. 
No attempt, however, was apparently made to strengthen the resolu- 
tion by affixing a penalty for its infringement. It was a simple 
declaration of opinion, and nothing more. 1 

Symptoms of similar difficulty in the rigid enforcement of the 
canon are observable elsewhere. The proceedings of the first council 
of Toledo, held in the year 400, shows not only that it was a recent 
innovation which continued to be disregarded, but that it had given 
rise to a crowd of novel questions which required imperatively to be 
settled, as to the status of the several grades of clerks who were 
guilty of various forms of disobedience 2 — the prototype and examplar 
of innumerable similar attempts at legislation which continued for 
more than a thousand years to occupy a good part of the attention 
of almost every council and synod. The prelates of Cis-Alpine 
Gaul, assembled in the council of Turin in 401, could only be 
brought to pronounce incapable of promotion those who contravened 
the injunction which separated them from their wives. 3 The prac- 
tical working of this was to permit those to retain their wives who 
were satisfied with the grade to which they had attained. Thus the 
priest, who saw little prospect of elevation to the episcopate, might 
readily console himself with the society of his wife, while the powerful 
influence of the wives would be brought to bear against the prompt- 
ings of ambition on the part of their husbands. The punishment 
thus was heaviest on the lower grades and lightest on the higher 
clergy, whose position should have rendered the sin more heinous — 
in fact, the bishop, to whom further promotion was impossible, 
escaped entirely from the penalty. 



1 Faustinus episcopus ecclesiae Po- 
tentinse, provincise Piceni, legatus Ro- 
mans ecclesiae, dixit : Placet ut epis- 
copus, presbyter et diaconus vel qui 
sacramenta contrectant pudicitiaa cus- 
todes ab uxoribus se abstineant. Ab 
universis episcopis dictum est: Placet 
ut in omnibus pudicitia custodiatur 
qui altari inserviunt (Cod. Eccles. 
African, can. iv.). 

That strict rules were not enforced 
in the African church is rendered 
probable by another circumstance. 
Faustus the Manichsean, in defending 
the tenets of his sect on the subject 
of marriage and celibacy, enters into 
an elaborate comparison of their doc- 
trines and practices with those of the 
Catholic church. In ridiculing the 



idea that the Manichaeans prohibited 
marriage to their followers, he could 
not have omitted the argument and 
contrast derivable from prohibition 
of marriage by the Catholics, had 
such prohibition been enforced. His 
omission to do this is therefore a 
negative proof of great weight. — See 
Augustin. contra Faust. Manich. Lib. 
xxx. c. iv. 

2 Concil. Toletan. I. ann. 400 can- 
1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 18, 19. 

3 Hi autem qui contra interdictum 
sunt ordinati, vel in ministerio Alios 
genuerunt, ne ad majores gradus or- 
dinum permittantur synodi decrevit 
auctoritas. — Concil. Taurinens. c. 8. 



76 



ENFOKCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 



Even as late as 441 the first council of Orange shows how utterly 
the rule had been neglected by ordering that for the future no mar- 
ried man should be ordained deacon without making promise of sep- 
aration from his wife, for contravention of which he was to suffer 
degradation ; while those who had previously been admitted to orders 
were only subjected to the canon of the council of Turin, incurring 
merely loss of promotion. 1 This evidently indicates that the regu- 
lation was a novelty, for it admits the injustice of subjecting to the 
rigor of the canon those who had taken orders without being aware 
of the obligations incurred ; and it is a fair conclusion to suppose 
that this was a compromise by which the existing clergy gave their 
assent to the rule for the benefit of their successors, provided that 
they themselves escaped its full severity. In fact, it seemed to be 
impossible to make the church of Gaul accept the rule of discipline. 
About 459, we find Leo I., in answer to some interrogatories of 
Rusticus, Bishop of Narbonne, laboriously explaining that deacons 
and subdeacons, as well as bishops and priests, must treat their wives 
as sisters. 2 Rusticus had evidently asked the question, and Leo 
expresses no surprise at his ignorance. 

The Irish Church, founded about the middle of the fifth century, 
although it was to a great extent based on monachism, apparently 
did not at first order the separation of the sexes. A century later 
an effort seems to have been made in this direction ; but the canons 
of a synod held in the early part of the eighth century show that 
priests at that time were not prevented from having wives. 3 

Even where the authority of the decretals of Siricius and Innocent 
was received with respectful silence, it was not always easy to enforce 
their provisions. An epistle of Innocent to the bishops of Calabria 
shows that, within territory depending strictly upon Rome itself, a 
passive resistance was maintained, requiring constant supervision and 
interference to render the rule imperative. Some priests, whose 
growing families rendered their disregard of discipline as unquestion- 
able as it was defiant, remained unpunished. Either the bishops 
refused to execute the laws, or their sympathies were known to be 



1 Concil. Arausic. I. c. 22, 23, 24. 

2 Leon. PP. I. Epist. clxvii. In- 
quis. iii. 

3 Catalogue Sanctt. Hibern. (Haddan 
& StubbsII. 292)— Confessio S. Patricii 
(Ibid. 308, 310)— Epist. S. Patricii (Ibid. 



31 7}— Synod. S. Patricii can. 6 (Ibid. 
329). The date of all these documents 
is of course somewhat conjectural, but 
I have assumed it safe to follow the 
conclusions of the painstaking and 
lamented Mr. Haddan. 



POPULAK DESIRE FOR CELIBACY. 77 

with the offenders, for the pious layman whose sensibilities were 
wounded by the scandal felt himself obliged to appeal to the Pope. 
Innocent accordingly ordered the accused to be tried and to be 
expelled, while he expressed no little surprise at the negligence of 
the prelates who were so remiss. 1 It is more difficult to understand 
the edict of 420, issued by Honorius, to which allusion has already 
been made (p. 55). This law expressly declares that the desire for 
purity does not require the separation of wives whose marriage took 
place before the ordination of their husbands. 

These disconnected attempts at resistance were unsuccessful. Sa- 
cerdotalism triumphed, and the rule which forbade marriage to those 
in orders, and separated husband and wife, when the former was 
promoted to the ministry of the altar, became irrevocably incorporated 
in the canon law. Thoroughout the struggle the Papacy had a most 
efficient ally in the people. The holiness and the necessity of abso- 
lute purity was so favorite a theme with the leading minds of the 
church, and formed so prominent a portion of their daily homilies 
and exhortations, that the popular mind could not but be deeply im- 
pressed with its importance, and therefore naturally exacted of the 
pastor the sacrifice which cost so little to the flock. An instance or 
two occurring about this period will show how vigilant was the watch 
kept upon the virtue of ecclesiastics, and how summary was the pro- 
cess by which indignation was visited upon even the most exalted, 
when suspected of a lapse from the rigid virtue required of them. 
Thirty years after the ordination of St. Brice, who succeeded St. 
Martin in the diocese of Tours, rumor credited him with the paternity 
of a child unseasonably born of a nun. In their wrath the citizens 
by common consent determined to stone him. The saint calmly 
ordered the infant, then in its thirtieth day, to be brought to him, 
and adjured it in the name of Christ to declare if it were his, to which 
the little one firmly replied "Thou art not my father!" The people, 
attributing the miracle to magic, persisted in their resolution, when 
St. Brice wrapped a quantity of burning coals in his robe, and 
pressing the mass to his bosom carried it to the tomb of St. Martin, 
where he deposited his burden, and displayed his robe uninjured. 
Even this was insufficient to satisfy the outraged feelings of the pop- 
ulace, and St. Brice deemed himself fortunate in making his escape 
uninjured, when a successor was elected to the bishopric. 2 Somewhat 

1 Innocent. PP. I. Epist. v. 2 Greg. Turon. Hist. Franc. Lib. n. c. 1. 



78 ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 

similar was the case of St. Simplicius, Bishop of Autun. Even as 
a layman, his holy zeal had led him to treat as a sister his beautiful 
wife, who was inspired with equal piety. On his elevation to the 
episcopate, still confident of their mutual self-control, she refused to 
be separated from him. The people, scandalized at the impropriety, 
and entertaining a settled incredulity as to the superhuman virtue 
requisite to such restraint, mobbed the bishop's dwelling, and ex- 
pressed their sentiments in a manner more energetic than respectful. 
The saintly virgin called for a portable furnace full of fire, emptied 
its contents into her robe, and held it uninjured for an hour, when 
she transferred the ordeal to her husband, saying that the trial was 
as nothing to the flames through which they had already passed un- 
scathed. The result with him was the same, and the people retired, 
ashamed of their unworthy suspicions. 1 Gregory of Tours, who 
relates these legends, was sufficiently near in point of time for them 
to have an historical value, even when divested of their miraculous 
ornaments. They bring before us the popular tendencies and modes 
of thought, and show us how powerful an instrument the passions of 
the people became, when skilfully aroused and directed by those in 
authority. 

The Western church was thus at length irrevocably committed to 
the strict maintenance of ecclesiastical celibacy, and the labors of the 
three great Latin Fathers, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustin, were 
crowned with success. It is perhaps worth while to cast a glance at 
such evidences as remain to us of the state of morals about this 
period and during the fifth century, and to judge whether the new rule 
of discipline had resulted in purifying the church of the corruptions 
which had so excited the indignation of the anchorite of Bethlehem, 
and had nerved him in his fierce contests with those who opposed the 
enforced asceticism of the ministers of Christ. 

How the morals of the church fared during the struggle is well 
exhibited in the writings of St. Jerome himself, as quoted above, 
describing the unlawful unions of the agapetse with ecclesiastics and 
the horrors induced by the desire to escape the consequences of in- 
cautious frailty. Conclusions not less convincing may be drawn from 
his assertion that holy orders were sometimes assumed on account of 
the superior opportunities which clericature gave of improper inter- 

1 Greg. Turon. de Grlor. Confess, c. 76. 



EFFECT ON ECCLESIASTICAL MORALITY. 



79 



course with women; 1 and from his description of the ecclesiastics, 
who passed their lives in female companionship, surrounded by young 
female slaves, and leading an existence which differed from matrimony 
only in the absence of the marriage ceremony. 2 

But a short time after the recognition of the rule appeared the 
law of Honorius, promulgated in 420, to which reference has already 
been made. It is possible that the permission of residence there 
granted to the wives of priests may have been intended to act as a 
partial cure to evils caused by the enforcement of celibacy ; and this 
is rendered the more probable, since other portions of the edict show 
that intercourse with improper females had increased to such a degree 
that the censures of the church could no longer restrain it, and that 
an appeal to secular interference was necessary, by which such prac- 
tices should be made a crime to be punished by the civil tribunals. 3 
That even this failed lamentably in purifying the church may be 
gathered from the proceedings of the provincial councils of the 
period. 

Thus, in 453, the council of Anjou repeats the prohibition of 
improper female intimacy, giving as a reason the ruin constantly 
wrought by it. For those who thereafter persisted in their guilt, 
however, the only penalty threatened was incapacity for promotion 
on the part of the lower grades, and suspension of functions for the 
higher 4 — whence we may conclude that practically an option was 
afforded to those who preferred sin to ambition. The second council 
of Aries, in 443, likewise gives an insight into the subterfuges 
adopted to evade the rule and to escape detection. 5 About this 
period a newly-appointed bishop, Talasius of Angers, applied to 
Lupus of Troyes and Euphronius of Autun for advice concerning 
various knotty points, among which were the rules respecting the 
celibacy of the different grades. In their reply the prelates advised 
their brother that it would be well if the increase of priests' families 
could be prevented, but that such a consummation was almost im- 
possible if married men were admitted to orders, and that if he 
wanted to escape ceaseless wrangling and the scandal of seeing chil- 



1 Sunt alii (de mei ordinis hominibus 
loquor) qui ideo presbyteratum et dia- 
conatum ambiunt ut mulieres licentius 
videant. — Epist. xxn. ad Eustoch. cap. 

28. 

2 Epist. cxxv. ad Rusticum, cap. G. 



3 Lib. xvi. Cod. Theod. Tit. ii. 1. 44. 

4 Concil. Andegav. ann. 453 c. 4. 

5 Nullus diaconus vel presbyter vel 
episcopus ad cellarii secretum intro- 
mittat piiellam vel ingenuam vel an- 
cillam. — Concil. Arelatens. II. c. 4. 



80 



ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 



dren born to his priests, he had better ordain those only who were 
single. 1 The subject was one of endless effort. In fact, of the 
numerous councils whose canons have reached us, held in Gaul and 
Spain during the centuries which intervened until the invasion of 
the Saracens and the decrepitude of the Merovingian dynasty caused 
their discontinuance, there is scarcely one which did not feel the 
necessity of legislating on this delicate matter. It would be tedious 
and unprofitable to detail specifically the innumerable exhortations, 
threats, and ingenious devices resorted to in the desperate hope of 
enforcing obedience to the rules and of purifying the morals of the 
clergy. Suffice it to say that the constantly varying punishments 
enacted, the minute supervision ordered over every action of the 
priesthood, the constant attendance of witnesses whose inseparable 
companionship should testify to the virtue of each ecclesiastic, and 
the perpetual iteration of the rule in every conceivable shape, prove 
at once the hopelessness of the attempt, and the incurable nature of 
the disorders of which the church was at once the cause and the 
victim. In short, this perpetual legislation frequently betrays the 
fact that it was not only practically impossible to maintain separation 
between the clergy and their wives, but that at times marriage was 
not uncommon even within the prohibited orders. 2 

Perhaps this may not move our surprise when we glance at the 
condition of morality existing throughout the Empire in the second 
quarter of the fifth century, as sketched by a zealous churchman of 



1 Epist. Lupi et Euphronii. (Har- 
duin. II. 792.) 

2 Whatever interest there might be 
in exhibiting in detail the varying 
legislation and the expedients of lenity 
or severity by turns adopted, would 
scarcely repay the space which it 
would occupy or relieve the monotony 
of retracing the circle in which the 
unfortunate fathers of the church 
perpetually moved. I therefore con- 
tent myself with simply indicating 
such canons of the period as bear 
upon the subject, for the benefit of 
any student who may desire to exa- 
mine the matter more minutely. 

Concil. Turon. I. (ann. 460) c. 2, 
3.— Agathens. (506) c. 9.— Aureli- 
anens. I. (511) c. 13. — Tarraconens. 
(516) c. 1.— Gerundens. (517) c. 6, 
7. — Epaonens. (517) c. 2, 32.— Iler- 



dens. (523) c. 2, 5, 15.— Toletan. II. 
(531) c. 1, 3.— Aurelianens. II. (533) 
c. 8.— Arvernens. I. (535) c. 13, 16.— 
Aurelianens. III. (538) c. 2, 4, 7.— 
Aurelianens. IV. (541) c. 17. — Aure- 
lianens. V. (549) c. 3, 4. — Bracarens. 

1. (563) c. 15.— Turonens. II. (567) 
c. 10, 12, 13, 15, 19, 20.— Bracarens. 
II. (572) c. 8, 32, 39.— Autissiodor. 
(578) c. 21.— Matiscon. I. (581) c. 1, 

2, 3, 11.— Lugdunens. III. (583) c. 1. 
—Toletan. III. (589) c. 5.— Hispalens. 
I. (590) c. 3.— Csesaraugustan. (592) 
c. 1. — Toletan. (597) c. 1. — Oscensis 
(598) c. 2.— Egarens. (614) c. unic. 
— Concil. loc. incert. (a. 615) c. 8, 12. 
—Toletan. IV. (633) c. 42, 44, 52, 55. 
— Cabilonens (649) c. 3.— Toletan. 
VIII. (653) c. 4, 5, 6, 7.— Toletan. IX. 
(655) c. 10.— Toletan. XI. (675) c. 5. 
— Bracarens. III. (675) c. 4. — Augus- 
todunens. (690) c. 10. 






CONDITION OF SOCIETY. 81 

the period. Salvianus, Bishop of Marseilles, was a native of Treves. 
Three times he witnessed the sack of that unfortunate city by the 
successive barbarian hordes which swept over Western Europe, and 
he lifts up his voice, like Jeremiah, to bewail the sins of his people, 
and the unutterable misfortunes which were the punishment but not 
the cure of those sins. Nothing can be conceived more utterly 
licentious and depraved than the whole framework of society as 
described by him, with such details as preclude us from believing 
that holy indignation or pious sensibility led him to exaggerate the 
outlines or to darken the shades of the picture. The criminal and 
frivolous pleasures of a decrepit civilization left no thought for the 
absorbing duties of the day or the fearful trials of the morrow. 
Unbridled lust and unblushing indecency admitted no sanctity in 
the marriage-tie. The rich and powerful established harems, in the 
recesses of which their wives lingered, forgotten, neglected, and 
despised. The banquet, the theatre, and the circus exhausted what 
little strength and energy were left by domestic excesses. The poor 
aped the vices of the rich, and hideous depravity reigned supreme 
and invited the vengeance of Heaven. Such rare souls as could 
remain pure amid the prevailing contamination would naturally take 
refuge in the contrast of severe asceticism, and resolutely seek abso- 
lute seclusion from a world whose every touch was pollution. The 
secular clergy, however, drawn from the ranks of a society so utterly 
corrupt, and enjoying the wealth and station which rendered their 
position an object for the ambition of the worldly, could not avoid 
sharing to a great extent the guilt of their flocks, whose sins were 
more easily imitated than eradicated. Nor does Salvianus confine 
his denunciations to Gaul and Spain. Africa and Italy are represented 
as even worse, the prevalence of unnatural crimes lending a deeper dis- 
gust to the rivalry in iniquity. Rome was the sewer of the nations, 
the centre of abomination of the world, where vice openly assumed its 
most repulsive form, and wickedness reigned unchecked and supreme. 
It is true that the descriptions of Salvianus are intended to include 
the whole body of the people, and that his special references to the 
church are but few. Those occasional references, however, are not 
of a nature to exempt it from sharing in the full force of his indig- 
nation. When he pronounces the Africans to be utterly licentious, 
he excepts those who have been regenerated in religion — but these 
he declares to be so few in number that it is difficult to believe them 



82 



ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY. 



Africans. What hope, he asks, can there be for the people when 
even in the church itself the most diligent search can scarce discover 
one chaste amid so many thousands : and when imperial Carthage 
was tottering to its fall under the assaults of the besieging Vandals, 
he describes its clergy as wantoning in the circus and the theatre — 
those without falling under the sword of the barbarian, those within 
abandoning themselves to sensuality. 1 This, be it remembered, is 
that African church which had just been so carefully nurtured in the 
purest asceticism for thirty years, under the unremitting care of 
Augustin, who died while his episcopal city of Hippo was encircled 
with the leaguer of the Yandals. 

Nor were these disorders attributable to the irruption of the Bar- 
barians, for Salvianus sorrowfully contrasts their purity of morals 
with the reckless dissoluteness of the Romans. The respect for 
female virtue, inherent in the Teutonic tribes, has no warmer 
admirer than he, and he recounts with wonder how the temptations 
of luxury and vice, spread before them in the wealthy cities which 
they sacked, excited only their disgust, and how, so far from yielding 
to the allurements that surrounded them, they sternly set to work to 
reform the depravity of their new subjects, and enacted laws to repress 
at least the open manifestations which shocked their untutored virtue. 

When corruption so ineradicable pervaded every class, we can 
scarce wonder that in the story of the trial of Sixtus III., in 440, 
for the seduction of a nun, when his accusers were unable to sub- 
stantiate the charge, he is said to have addressed the synod assembled 
in judgment by repeating to them the story of the woman taken in 
adultery, and the decision of Christ. Whether it were intended to 
be regarded as a confession, or as a sarcasm on the prelates around 
him, whom he thus challenged to cast the first stone, the tale whether 
true or false is symptomatic of the time. 2 

As regards the East, if the accusations brought against Ibas, 
Metropolitan of Edessa, at the Synod of Berytus in 448, 3 are worthy 
of credit, the Oriental church was not behind the West in the 
effrontery of sin. 



1 Salvian. De Gubernat. Dei Lib. vi. 

VII. 

2 Expurgat. Sixti Papse c. vi. (Har- 
duin. Concil. II. 1742).— Pagi (ann. 
433, No. 19) casts doubt on the authen- 
ticity of the proceedings of this trial, 
and modern criticism (see "Janus" 



The Pope and the Council, p. 124) 
assumes it to be a fabrication of the 
early part of the sixth century, made 
for the purpose of vindicating the im- 
munity of the clergy from secular law. 

3 Concil. Chalcedon. Act. X. (Har- 
duin. II. 518-9). 



VI. 
THE EASTERN CHURCH. 



During the period which we have been considering, there had 
gradually arisen a divergence between the Christians of the East 
and of the West. The Arianism of Constantius opposed to the 
orthodoxy of Constans lent increased development to the separation 
which the division of the Empire had commenced. The rapid 
growth of the New Rome founded on the shores of the Bosporus 
gave to the East a political metropolis which rendered it independent 
of the power of Rome, and the patriarchate there erected absorbed 
to itself the supremacy of the old Apostolic Sees, which had previ- 
ously divided the ecclesiastical strength of the East. In the West, 
the Bishop of Rome was unquestionably the highest dignitary, and 
when the separation relieved him of the rivalry of prelates equal in 
rank, he was enabled to acquire an authority over the churches of 
the Occident undreamed of in previous ages. As yet, however, there 
was little pretension of extending that power over the East, and 
though the ceaseless quarrels which raged in Antioch, Constanti- 
nople, and Alexandria enabled him frequently to intervene as arbiter, 
still he had not yet assumed the tone of a judge without appeal or 
of an autocratic lawgiver. 

Though five hundred years were still to pass before the Greek 
schism formally separated Constantinople from the communion of 
Rome, yet already, by the close of the fourth century, the char- 
acteristics which ultimately led to that schism were beginning to 
develop themselves with some distinctness. The sacerdotal spirit of 
the West showed itself in the formalism which loaded religion with 
rules of observance and discipline enforced with Roman severity. 
The inquiring and metaphysical tendencies of the East discovered 
unnumbered doubtful points of belief, which were argued with ex- 
haustive subtlety and supported by relentless persecution. However 



84 



THE EASTEEN CHUKCH. 



important it might be for any polemic to obtain for his favorite 
dogma the assent of the Roman bishop, whose decisions on such 
points thus constantly acquired increased authority, yet when the 
Pope undertook to issue laws and promulgate rules of discipline, 
whatever force they had was restricted to the limits of the Latin 
tongue. Accordingly, we find that the decretals of Siricius and 
Innocent I. produced no effect throughout the East. Asceticism 
continued to flourish there as in its birthplace, but it was voluntary, 
and there is no trace of any official attempt to render it universally 
imperative. The canon of Nicsea of course was law, and the purity 
of the church required its strict observance, to avoid scandals and 
immorality ;* but beyond this and the ancient rules excluding digami 
and prohibiting marriage in orders no general laws were insisted on, 
and each province or patriarchate was allowed to govern itself in 
this respect. How little the Eastern prelates thought of introducing 
compulsory celibacy is shown by the fact that at the second general 
council, held at Constantinople in 381, only four or five years before 
the decretals of Siricius, there is no trace of any legislation on the 
subject; and this acquires increased significance when we observe 
that although this council has always been reckoned (Ecumenic, and 
has enjoyed full authority throughout the church universal, yet out 
of one hundred and fifty bishops who signed the acts, but one — 
a Spanish prelate — was from the West. 

This avoidance of action was not merely an omission of surplusage. 
Had the disposition existed to erect the custom of celibacy into a 
law, there was ample cause for legislation on the subject. Epipha- 
nius, who died in the year 403 at a very advanced age, probably 
compiled his " Panarium" not long after this period; he belonged to 
the extreme school of ascetics, and lost no opportunity of asserting 
the most rigid rule with regard to virginity and continence, which he 
considered to be the base and corner-stone of the church. While 



1 The strictness with which the 
Nicene canon was enforced is shown 
"by an epistle of St. Basil, about the 
middle of the fourth century, in which 
he sternly reproves a priest named 
Paregorius, who at the age of 70 had 
thought himself sufficiently protected 
against scandal to allow to his infirmi- 
ties the comfort of a housekeeper. The 
unlucky female is ordered to be forth- 
with immured in a convent, and, until 
this is accomplished, Paregorius is 



forbidden to perform his priestly func- 
tions. The whole is based on the au- 
thority of the council of Nicaea. — " Nee 
primo nee soli (tibi Paregori) sancivi- 
mus, non debere mulierculas cohabi- 
tare viris. Lege canonem, a Sanctis 
patribus nostris in Nicsena synodo 
constitutum : qui manifeste interdixit, 
ne quis mulierculam subintroductam 
habeat. Ccelibatus autem honestatem 
suam in eo habet, si quis a nexu mu- 
lieris secesserit." 



CELIBACY NOT COMPULSORY. 



85 



assuming celibacy to be the rule for all concerned in the functions of 
the priesthood, he admits that in many places it was not observed, on 
account of the degradation of morals or of the impossibility of obtain- 
ing enough ministers irreprehensible in character to satisfy the needs 
of the faithful. 1 

That Epiphanius endeavored to erect into a universal canon rules 
only adopted in certain churches is rendered probable by an allusion 
of St. Jerome, who, in his controversy with Vigilantius, urged in 
support of celibacy the custom of the churches of the East (or 
Antioch), of Alexandria, and of Rome. 2 He thus omits the great 
exarchates of Ephesus, Pontus, and Thrace, as not lending strength 
to his argument. Of these the first is perhaps explicable by the 
latitudinarianism of its metropolitan, Anthony, Bishop of Ephesus. 
At the council of Constantinople, held in 400, this prelate was 
accused of many crimes, among which were simony, the conversion 
to the use of his family of ecclesiastical property and even of the 
sacred vessels, and further, that after having vowed separation from 
his wife, he had had children by her. 3 Even Egypt, the nursery of 
monachism, affords a somewhat suspicious example in the person of 
Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais. This philosophic disciple of Hypatia, 
when pressed to accept the bishopric, declined it on various grounds, 
among which was his unwillingness to be separated from his wife, or 
to live with her secretly like an adulterer, the separation being par- 
ticularly objectionable to him, as interfering with his desire for numer- 
ous offspring. 4 Synesius, however, was apparently able to reconcile the 
incompatibilities, for after accepting the episcopal office, we find, when 
the Libyans invaded the Pentapolis and he stood boldly forth to pro- 
tect his flock, that two days before an expected encounter, he confided 
to his brother's care his children, to whom he asked the transfer of 
that tender fraternal affection which he himself had always enjoyed. 5 

It is easy to imagine what efforts were doubtless made to extend 
the rule and to render it as imperative throughout the East as it was 
becoming in the West, when we read the extravagant laudations of 
virginity uttered about this time by St. John Chrysostom, who lent 



1 Hseres. lix. c. 4. 

2 Quid faciunt Orientis ecclesise? 
Quid JEgypti et sedis Apostolicaa, quae 
aut virgines clericos accipiunt, aut con- 
tinentes : autsiuxoreshabuerint, mariti 
esse desistunt. — Lib. adv. Vigilaat. c. 2. 



3 Sextum, quod dimissa uxore sua 
cum ea rursus congressus est, filiosque 
ex ea procreasset. — Palladii Dial, de 
Vit. S. Joan. Chrysost. cap. xiii. 

* Synesii Epist. cv. 

5 Ejusd. Epist. cviii. 



86 



THE EASTERN CHURCH. 



the sanction of his great name and authority to the assertion that it 
it as superior to marriage as heaven is to earth, or as angels are to 
men. 1 Strenuous as these efforts may have been, however, they have 
left no permanent record, and their effect was short-lived. Within 
thirty years of the time when Jerome quoted the example of the 
eastern churches as an argument against Vigilantius, Socrates chroni- 
cles as a novelty the introduction into Thessalia of compulsory 
separation between married priests and their wives, which he says 
was commanded by Heliodorus, Bishop of Trica, apparently to com- 
pensate for the amatory character of the "iEthiopica," written in his 
youth. The same rule, Socrates informs us, was observed in Greece, 
Macedonia, and Thessalonica, but throughout the rest of the East he 
asserts that such separation was purely voluntary, and even that 
many bishops had no scruple in maintaining ordinary intercourse 
with their wives 2 — a statement easy to be believed in view of the 
complaints of St. Isidor of Pelusium, about the same time, that the 
rules of the church enjoining chastity received little respect among 
the priesthood. 3 

The influence of Jerome, Chrysostom, and other eminent church- 
men, the example of the West, and the efforts of the Origenians in 
favor of philosophic asceticism, doubtless had a powerful effect during 
the first years of the fifth century in extending the custom, but they 
failed in the endeavor to render it universal and obligatory, and the 
testimony of Socrates shows how soon even those provinces which 
adopted it in Jerome's time returned to the previous practice of leav- 
ing the matter to the election of the individual. The East thus pre- 
served the traditions of earlier times, as recorded in the Apostolic 
Constitutions and Canons, prohibiting marriage in orders and the 
ordination of digami, but imposing no compulsory separation on those 
who had been married previous to ordination. 

Even these rules required to be occasionally enunciated in order to 
maintain their observance. In 530 a constitution of Justinian calls 
attention to the regulation prohibiting the marriage of deacons and 
subdeacons, and in view of the little respect paid to it, the Emperor 
proceeds to declare the children of such unions spurious (not even 
nothi or naturales) and incompetent to inherit anything ; the wife is 



1 Et si placet, quanto etiam melior 
sit addam, quanto ccelum terra, quanto 
hominibusangeli. — Lib. de Virgin, c. x. 



2 Socrat. H. E. Lib. v. c. 21. 

3 S. Isidor. Pelusiot. Epist. Lib. in. 
No. 75. 



LEGISLATION OP JUSTINIAN. 



87 



likewise incapacitated from inheritance, and the whole estate of the 
father is escheated to the church — the severity of which may perhaps 
be a fair measure of the extent of the evil which it was intended to 
repress. 1 Five years later Justinian recurs to the subject, and lays 
down the received regulations in all their details. Any one who 
keeps a concubine, or who has married a divorced woman or a second 
wife, is to be held ineligible to the diaconate or priesthood. Any 
member of those orders or of the subdiaconate who takes a wife or a 
concubine, whether publicly or secretly, is thereupon to be degraded 
and to lose all clerical privileges ; and though the strongest preference 
is expressed for those who though married preserve strict continence, 
the very phrase employed indicates that this was altogether a matter 
of choice, and that previous conjugal relations were not subject to 
any legislative interference. 2 These same regulations were repeated 
some ten years later in a law, promulgated about 545, 3 which was 
preserved throughout the whole period of Greek jurisprudence, being 
inserted by Leo the Philosopher in his Basilica, 4 quoted by Photius 
in the Nomocanon, and referred to as still in force by Balsamon in 
the thirteenth century. 5 At the same time Justinian tacitly admits 
the failure of previous efforts when he adds a provision by which an 
unmarried postulant for the diaconate is obliged to pledge himself 
not to marry, and any bishop permitting such marriage is threatened 
with degradation. 6 

Bishops, however, were subjected to the full severity of the Latin 
discipline. As early as 528, Justinian ordered that no one should be 
eligible to the episcopate who was burdened with either children or 
grandchildren, giving as a reason the engrossing duties of the office, 
which required that the whole mind and soul should be devoted to 
them, and still more significantly hinting the indecency of converting 
to the use of the prelate's family the wealth bestowed by the faithful 



1 Constit. 45 Cod. i. 3. This law is 
preserved by Photius (Nomoc. Tit. ix. 
c. 29), but Balsamon (Schol. ad. loc.) 
says that it is omitted in the Basilica. 

2 "Nihil enim sic in sacris ordina- 
tionibus diligimus quam cum castitate 
viventes, aut cum uxoribus non cohab- 
itantes, aut unius uxoris virum, qui vel 
fuerit vel sit, et ipsam castitatem eli- 
gentem." The lector could, by forfeit- 
ing his prospects of promotion, marry 
a second time, if pressed by overmaster- 



ing necessity, but he was not allowed, 
under any excuse, to take a third wife. 
— Novell, vi. c. 5. — These provisions 
were repeated the following year in 
Novell, xxit. c. 42. 

3 Novell, cxxiii. c. 12. 

4 Basilicon in. i. 26. 

5 Balsamon. Schol. ad Nomocanon. 
Tit. i. c. 23. 

6 Novell, cxxin. c. 14. 



88 THE EASTERN" CHURCH. 

on the church for pious uses and for charity. 1 It is probable that 
this was not strictly observed, for in 535, when repeating the injunc- 
tion, and adding a restriction on conjugal intercourse, he intimates 
that no inquiry shall be made into infractions previously occurring, 
but that it shall be rigidly enforced for the future. 2 The decision 
was final as regards the absence of a wife, for it was again alluded to 
in 548, and that law is carried through the Nomocanon and Basilica. 8 
The absence of children as a prerequisite to the episcopate, however, 
was not insisted upon so pertinaciously, for Leo the Philosopher, 
after the compilation of the Basilica, issued a constitution allowing 
the ordination of bishops who had legitimate offspring, arguing that 
brothers and other relatives were equally prone to withdraw them 
from the duties of their position. 4 

It is not worth while to enter into the interminable controversy 
respecting the council held at Constantinople in 680, the canons of 
which were promulgated in 692, and which is known to polemics as 
the Quinisext in Trullo. The Greeks maintain that it was (Ecu- 
menic, and its legislation binding upon Christendom; the Latins, 
that it was provincial and schismatic; but whether Pope Agatho ac- 
ceded to its canons or not ; whether a century later Adrian I. admitted 
them, or whether their authentication by the second council of 
Nicsea gave them authority over the whole church or not, are ques- 
tions of little practical importance for our purpose, for they never 
were really incorporated into the law of the West, and they are only 
to be regarded as forming a portion of the received ecclesiastical 
jurisprudence of the East. In one sense, however, their bearing 
upon the Latin church is interesting, for, in spite of them, Rome 
maintained communion with Constantinople for more than a century 
and a half, and the schism which then took place arose from altogether 
different causes. In the West, therefore, celibacy was only a point 
of discipline, of no doctrinal importance, and not a matter of heresy, 
as we shall see it afterwards become under the stimulus afforded by 
Protestant controversy. 

The canons of the Quinisext are very full upon all the questions 
relating to celibacy, and show that great relaxation had occurred in 

1 Const. 42 \ 1. Cod. i. 3. — Basilicon | 3 Novell, cxxxvn. c. 2. — Basilicon 
in. i. 26. in. i. c. 8. — Balsamon. Schol. ad Nomo- 



2 Novell, vi. c. 1. 



can. Tit. i. c. 23. 

4 Leonis. Novell. Constit. n. 



THE QUINISEXT IN TKULLO. 



89 



enforcing the regulations embodied in the laws of Justinian. Digami 
must have become numerous in the church, for the prohibition of 
their ordination is renewed, and all who had not released themselves 
from such forbidden unions by June 15th of the preceding year are 
condemned to suffer deposition. So marriage in orders had evidently 
become frequent, for all guilty of it are enjoined to leave their wives, 
when, after a short suspension, they are to be restored to their posi- 
tion, though ineligible to promotion. 1 A much severer punishment 
is, however, provided for those who should subsequently be guilty of 
the same indiscretion, for all such infractions of the rule are visited 
with absolute deposition 2 — thus proving that it had fallen into desue- 
tude, since those who sinned after its restoration were regarded as 
much more culpable than those who had merely transgressed an 
obsolete law. Even bishops had neglected the restrictions imposed 
upon them by Justinian, for the council refers to prelates in Africa, 
Libya, and elsewhere, who lived openly with their wives; and 
although this is prohibited for the future under penalty of deposition, 
and although all wives of those promoted to the episcopate are directed 
to be placed in nunneries at a distance from their husbands, yet the 
remarkable admission is made that this is done for the sake of the 
people, who regarded such things as a scandal, and not for the pur- 
pose of changing that which had been ordained by the Apostles. 3 

With regard to the future discipline of the great body of the 
clergy, the council, after significantly acknowledging that the Roman 
church required a promise of abstinence from married candidates for 
the diaconate and priesthood, proceeds to state that it desires to adhere 
to the Apostolic canon by keeping inviolate the conjugal relations of 
those in holy orders, and by permitting them to associate with their 
wives, only stipulating for continence during the time devoted to the 
ministry of the sacraments. To put an end to all opposition to this 
privilege, deposition is threatened against those who shall presume to 
interfere between the clergy and their wives, and likewise against all 
who, under pretence of religion, shall put their wives away. At the 
same time, in order to promote the extension of the church, in the 
foreign provinces, this latter penalty is remitted, as a concession to 



1 Quinisext. can. 3. 

2 Ibid. c. 6. 

3 Ibid. can. 12, 48. 



Hoc autem 



dicimus non ad ea abolenda et evertenda 
quae Apostolice antea constituta sunt, 
sed . . . ne status ecclesiasticus ullo 
probro efficiatur." 



90 



THE EASTERN CHURCH. 



the prejudices of the " Barbarians." 1 How thoroughly in some 
regions sacerdotal marriage had come to be the rule we learn from a 
reference to Armenia, where the Levitical custom of the Hebrews 
was imitated, in the creation of a sacerdotal caste, transmitted from 
father to son, and confined to the priestly houses. This limitation is 
condemned by the council, which orders that all who are worthy of 
ordination shall be regarded as eligible. 2 

The Eastern church thus formally and in the most solemn manner 
recorded its separate and independent discipline on this point, and 
refused to be bound by the sacerdotalism of Rome. It thus main- 
tained the customs transmitted from the early period, when asceticism 
had commenced to show itself, but it shrank from carrying out the 
principles involved to their ultimate result, as was sternly attempted 
by the inexorable logic of Rome. The system thus laid down was 
permanent, for throughout the East the Quinisext was received un- 
questioningly as a general council, and its decrees were authoritative 
and unalterable. It is true that in the confusion of the two follow- 
ing centuries a laxity of practice gradually crept in, by which those 
who desired to marry were admitted to holy orders while single, and 
were granted two years after ordination during which they were at 
liberty to take wives, but this was acknowledged to be an abuse, and 
about the year 900 it was formally prohibited by a constitution of 
Leo the Philosopher. 3 Thus restored, the Greek church has pre- 



1 Quinisext. e. 13, 30. 

2 Quinisext. c. 33. — The Armenian 
church in the middle ages, was exces- 
sively severe as to the chastity of its 
ministers. A postulant for orders was 
obliged to confess, and if he had been 
guilty of a single lapse, he was rejected. 
So a priest in orders if yielding to the 
weakness of the flesh out of wedlock 
was expelled, though they were not 
obliged to part with their wives, and 
the Greek rule permitting marriage in 
the lower orders was maintained. — 
Concil. Armenor. ann. 1362 Art. 50, 
53, 93 (Martene Ampl. Collect. VII. 
366-7, 403). 

3 Leonis Novell. Constit. in. — It is 
not improbable that this custom resulted 
from the iconoclastic schism of Leo the 
Isaurian and Constantine Copronymus, 
which occupied nearly the whole of the 
eighth century. These emperors found 
their most unyielding enemies in the 
monks. In the savage persecutions 
which disgraced the struggle, Constan- 



tine endeavored to extirpate monachism 
altogether. The accounts which his 
adversaries have transmitted of the vio- 
lence and cruelties which he perpetrated 
are doubtless exaggerated, but there is 
likelihood that his etforts to discounten- 
ance celibacy, as the foundation of the 
obnoxious institution, are correctly 
reported. " Publice defamavit et de- 
honestavit habitum monachorum in 
hippodromo, prsecipiens unumquemque 
monachum manutenere mulierem, et 
taliter transire per hippodrornum, 
sumptis injuriis ab omni populo cumu- 
latis " (Baronii Annal. ann. 766, No. 
1). He ejected the monks from the 
monasteries, which he turned into 
barracks ; some of the monks were 
tortured, others fled to the mountains 
and deserts, where they suffered every 
extremity, while others again succumb- 
ed to threats and temptations, and were 
publicly married — " alii corporeis vol- 
uptatibus addicti, suas etiam uxores cir- 
cumducere non erubescebant "(Ibid. 
No. 28, 29). 



RUSSIA — THE NESTORIANS 



91 



served its early traditions unaltered to the present day. Marriage 
in orders is not permitted, nor are diganii admissible, but the lower 
grades of the clergy are free to marry, nor are they separated from 
their wives when promoted to the sacred functions of the diaconate 
or priesthood. The bishops are selected from the regular clergy or 
monks, and, being bound by the vow of chastity, are of course un- 
married and unable to marry. Thus the legislation of Justinian is 
practically transmitted to the nineteenth century. Even this restric- 
tion on the freedom of marriage renders it difficult to preserve the 
purity of the priesthood, and the Greek church, like the Latin, is 
forced occasionally to renew the Nicene prohibition against the resi- 
dence of suspected women. 1 

The strongly marked hereditary tendency, which is so distinguish- 
ing a characteristic of mediaeval European institutions has led, in 
Russia at least, since the time of Peter the Great, to the customary 
transmission of the priesthood, and even of individual churches, from 
father to son, thus creating a sacerdotal caste. To such an extent 
has this been carried that marriage is obligatory on the parish priest, 
and custom requires that the wife shall be the daughter of a priest. 
Some of the results of this are to be seen in a law of 1867, forbid- 
ding for the future the aspirant to a cure from marrying the daughter 
of his predecessor or undertaking to support the family of the late 
incumbent as a condition precedent to obtaining the preferment. It 
shows how entirely the duties of the clergy had been lost in the sense 
of property and hereditary right attaching to benefices, leading in- 
evitably to the neglect or perfunctory performance of ecclesiastical 
duties. 2 We shall see hereafter how narrowly the Latin church es- 
caped a similar transformation, and how prolonged was the struggle 
to avoid it. 



One branch of the Eastern church, however, relaxed the rules of 
the Quinisext. In 431, Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, was 
excommunicated for his heretical subtleties as to the nature of the 
Godhead in Christ. Driven out from the Empire by the orthodox 
authorities, his followers spread throughout Mesopotamia and Persia, 



1 Synod. Montis Libani ann. 1736 
P. ii. c. v. No. 16, 17, Tab. I. No. 11 ; 
P. in. c. i. No. 11 ; P. iv. c. ii. No. 16. 
— Synod. Ain-Traz ann. 1835 c. xii. 
(Concil. Collect. Lacens. II. 134, 138, 
262, 263, 366, 367, 585). 



2 London "Academy," Nov. 13th, 
1869, p. 51.— See also " The Eussian 
Clergy," by Father Gagarin, London, 
1872 (London Athenaeum, No. 2334. 
p. 72-3). 



92 



THE EASTEKN CHURCH. 



where, by the end of the century, their efforts had gradually con- 
verted nearly the whole population. About the year 480, Barsuma, 
metropolitan of Nisibi, added to his Nestorian heresy the guilt of 
marrying a nun, when to justify himself he assembled a synod in 
which the privilege of marriage was granted not only to priests, but 
even to monks. In 485, Babueus, Patriarch of Seleucia, held a 
council which excommunicated Barsuma and condemned his licen- 
tious doctrines ; but, about ten years later, a subsequent patriarch, 
Babeus, in the council of Seleucia, obtained the enactment of canons 
conferring the privilege of marriage on all ranks of the clergy, from 
monk to patriarch. Some forty years later a debate recorded between 
the Patriarch Mar Aba and King Chosroes shows that repeated mar- 
riages were common among all orders, but Mar Aba subsequently 
issued a canon depriving patriarchs and bishops of the right, and 
subjecting them to the rules of the Latin and Greek churches. 1 

The career of the Nestorians shows that matrimony is not incom- 
patible with mission-work, for they were the most successful mission- 
aries on record. They penetrated throughout India, Tartary, and 
China. In the latter empire they lasted until the thirteenth century ; 
while in India they not improbably exercised an influence in modi- 
fying the doctrines of ancient Brahmanism, 2 and the Portuguese dis- 
coverers in the fifteenth century found them flourishing in Malabar. 
So numerous were they that during the existence of the Latin king- 
dom of Jerusalem they are described, in conjunction with the mono- 
physite sect of the Jacobines, as exceeding in numbers the inhabitants 
of the rest of Christendom. 3 



Another segment of the Eastern church may properly receive 
attention here. The Abyssinians and Coptic Christians of Egypt 
can scarcely in truth be considered a part of the Greek church, as 



1 For these details from the collec- 
tion of Asseman I am indebted to the 
Abate Zaccaria's Nuova Giustifica- 
zione del Celibato Sacro, pp. 129-30. 

2 The strange similarity between 
some of the teachings of the Bhaga- 
vad-gita and Christianity, and the ap- 
parent identity of the name and of some 
of the story of Krishna with those of 
Christ, would seem to need some such 
explanation as the above. The prob- 
lem however is too complicated for dis- 



cussion here. — See Weber's Indian 
Literature p. 238 and Monier Wil- 
liams's Indian Wisdom p. 136. For 
the question of St. Thomas's Indian 
Apostolate see Hohlenberg's learned 
tract, " De Originibus et Fatis Eccles. 
Christ, in India Orientali." Havniae 
1822. 

3 Hi omnes Nestoriani . . . cum 
Jacobinis longe plures esse dicuntur 
quam Latini et G-rseci. — Jac. de Vit- 
riaco Hist. Hierosol. cap. lxxvi. 



ABYSSINIA. 



93 



they are monophysite in belief, and have in many particulars adopted 
Jewish customs, such as circumcision, &c. Their observances as 
regards marriage, however, tally closely with the canons of the 
Quinisext, except that bishops are permitted to retain their wives. 
In the sixteenth century, Bishop Zaga Zabo, who was sent as envoy 
to Portugal by David, King of Abyssinia, left behind him a confes- 
sion of faith for the edification of the curious. In this document he 
describes the discipline of his church as strict in forbidding the cler- 
icature to illegitimates ; marriage is not dissolved by ordination, but 
second marriage, or marriage in orders, is prohibited, except under 
dispensation from the Patriarch, a favor occasionally granted to mag- 
nates for public reasons. Without such dispensation, the offender is 
expelled from the priesthood, while a bishop or other ecclesiastic 
convicted of having an illegitimate child is forthwith deprived of all 
his benefices and possessions. Monasteries, moreover, were numer- 
ous and monachal chastity was strictly enforced. 1 These rules, I 
presume, are still in force. A recent traveller in those regions states 
that " if a priest be married previous to his ordination, he is allowed 
to remain so ; but no one can marry after having entered the priest- 
hood" — while a mass of superstitious and ascetic observances has 
overlaid religion, until little trace is left of original Christianity. 2 



1 Calixt. de Conjug. Cleric, p. 415. — 
Osorii de Kebus Emmanuelis Kegis 
Lusit. Lib. ix. (Colon. 1574 p. 305 a). 

2 Parkyns's Life in Abyssinia, chap- 



xxxi. — Mr. Parkyns sums up about 
260 fast days in the year, most ot 
them much more rigid than those 
observed in the Catholic church. 



VII. 

MONACHISM. 



The Monastic Orders occupy too prominent a place in ecclesi- 
astical history, and were too powerful an instrument both for good 
and evil, to be passed over without some cursory allusion, although 
the secular clergy is more particularly the subject of the present 
sketch, and the rise and progress of monachism is a topic too 
extensive in its details to be thoroughly considered in the space 
which can be allotted to it. 

In this, as in some other forms of asceticism, we must look to 
Buddhism for the model on which the Church fashioned her institu- 
tions. Ages before the time of Sakyamuni, the life of the anchorite 
had become a favorite mode of securing the moksha, or supreme good 
of absorption in Brahma. Buddhism, in throwing open the way of 
salvation to all mankind, popularized this, and thus multiplied enor- 
mously the crowd of mendicants, who lived upon the charity of the 
faithful and who abandoned all the cares and duties of life in the 
hope of advancing a step in the scale of being and of ultimately 
obtaining the highest bliss of admission to Nirvana. In the hopeless 
confusion of Hindu chronology, it is impossible to define dates with 
exactness, but we know that at a very early period these Bhikshus 
and Bhikshunis, or mendicants of either sex, were organized in mon- 
asteries (Viharas or Sangharamas) erected by the piety of the faith- 
ful, and were subjected to definite rules, prominent among which 
were those of poverty and chastity, which subsequently became the 
foundation of all the Western orders. Probably the oldest existing 
scripture of Buddhism is the Pratimoksha, or collection of rules for 
observance by the bhikshus, which tradition, not without probability, 
ascribes to Sakyamuni himself. In this, infraction of chastity falls 
under the first of the four Parajika rules ; it is classed, with murder, 
among the most serious offences entailing excommunication and 



BUDDHIST INSTITUTIONS. 



95 



expulsion without forgiveness. The solicitation of a woman conies 
within the scope of the thirteen Sanghadisesa rules, entailing penance 
and probation, after which the offender may be absolved by an as- 
sembly of not less than twenty bhikshus. Other punishments are 
allotted for every suspicious act, and the utmost care is shown in 
the regulations laid down for the minutest details of social intercourse 
between the sexes. 1 

Under these rules, Buddhist monachism developed to an extent 
which more than rivals that of its Western derivative. The remains 
of the magnificent Viharas still to be seen in India testify at once to 
the enormous multitudes which found shelter in them and to the 
munificent piety of the monarchs and wealthy men who, as in Europe, 
sought to purchase the favor of Heaven by founding and enlarging 
these retreats for the devotee. In China, Buddhism was not intro- 
duced until the first century A. D., and yet, by the middle of the 
seventh century, in spite of repeated and severe persecutions, the 
number of monasteries already amounted to 3716, while two hundred 
years later the persecuting Emperor Wu-Tsung ordered the destruc- 
tion of no less than 4600 ; and at the present day it is estimated 
that there are 80,000 Buddhist monks in the environs of Pekin alone. 
When, in the seventh century, Hiouen-Thsang visited India, he de- 
scribes the Sangharama of Nalanda as containing ten thousand monks 
and novices ; and the later pilgrim, Fah-Hian, found fifty or sixty 
thousand in the island of Ceylon. In the fourteenth century, the 
city of Ilchi, in Chinese Tartary, possessed fourteen monasteries, 
averaging three thousand devotees in each ; while in Tibet, at the 
present time, there are in the vicinity of Lhassa twelve great monas- 
teries, containing a population of 18,500 lamas. In Ladak, the 
proportion of lamas to the laity is as one to thirteen ; in Spiti, one 
to seven ; and in Burmah, one to thirty. 2 Great as were the pro- 
portions to which European monachism grew, it never attained 
dimensions such as these. 

It was some time, however, before the intercourse between East 
and West led to the introduction of anchoritic and monastic customs. 
The first rudimentary development of a tendency in such direction 



1 Davids & Oldenberg's Vinaya 
Texts, Part I. pp. 4, 8, 14, 16, 32, 
35-7, 42, 47, 56— Cf. Beal's Catena 
pp. 209-14. — Burnouf, Indroduction a 
l'histoire du Buddhisme indien. 2e Ed. 
pp. 245-8. 



2 Beal's Chinese Pilgrims pp. xxxviii., 
xl., 155-9. — Schlagintweit's Buddhism 
in Tibet, pp. 164-5.— Wheeler's Hist. 
of India, III. 270.— Proc. Eoy. Geog. 
Society, in London " Keader" Nov. 17, 
1866. 



96 



MONACHISM 



is to be found in the vows, which, as stated in a previous section, 
had already, at an early period in the history of the church, become 
common among female devotees. In fact an order of widows, em- 
ployed in charitable works and supported from the offerings of the 
faithful, was apparently one of the primitive institutions of the 
Apostles. To prevent any conflict between the claims of the world 
and of the church, St. Paul directs that they shall be childless and 
not less than sixty years of age, so that on the one hand there might 
be no neglect of the first duty which he recognized as owing to the 
family, nor, on the other hand, that the devotee should be tempted 
by the flesh to quit the service which she had undertaken. 1 

This admirable plan may be considered the germ of the countless 
associations by which the church has in all ages earned the gratitude 
of mankind by giving to Christianity its truest practical exposition. 
It combined a refuge for the desolate with a most efficient organiza- 
tion for spreading the faith and administering charity ; and there 
was no thought of marring its utility by rendering it simply an 
instrument for exaggerating and propagating asceticism. St. Paul, 
indeed, expressly commands the younger ones to marry and bring up 
children f and he could little have anticipated the time when this 
order of widows, so venerable in its origin and labors, would, by 
the caprice of ascetic progress, come to be regarded as degraded in 
comparison with the virgin spouses of Christ, who selfishly endeavored 
to purchase their own salvation by shunning all the duties imposed 
on them by the Creator. 3 Nor could he have imagined that, after 
eighteen centuries, enthusiastic theologians would seriously argue that 
Christ and his Apostles had founded regular religious orders, bound 
by the three customary vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. 4 



1 I. Tim. v. 3-14. cf. Act. IX. 39-41. 
In the time of Tertullian these women 
were regularly ordained (Ad Uxor. 
Lib. I. c. 7). This was forbidden by 
the council of KlcEea (can. 19) and by 
that of Laodicea (can. 11) in 372. In 
451, however, we see by the council of 
Chalcedon (can. 15) that the ancient 
practice had been revived. The au- 
thorities on the question will be found 
very fully given by Chr. Lupus (Scho- 
lion in Can. 15 Concil. Chalced. — Opp. 
II. 90 sqq.). Even as late as the mid- 
dle of the ninth century stringent rules 
were promulgated to punish the mar- 
riage of deaconesses (Capitul. Add. III. 
Cap. 75.— Baluz. I. 1191). 



2 Volo ergo juniores [viduas] nu- 
bere, filios procreare, matresfamilias 
esse, nullam occasionem dare adver- 
sario — I. Tim. v. 14. 

3 See Leon. I. Epist. lxxxvii. cap. 2. 
(Harduin. I. 1775). This was not so 
in the earlier periods. Tertullian (De 
Prescription, iii.), in alluding to the 
various classes of ecclesiastics, places 
the widows immediately after the order 
of deacons, and before the virgins. 

4 Nothing is so illogical as the logic 
resorted to in order to prove foregone 
conclusions. Donato Calvi (apud Pan- 
zini, Pubblica Confessione di un Prigi- 
oneiro, Torino, 1865, p. Ill) quotes the 



DEVOTEES IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 



97 



In the early church, as has been already shown, all vows of conti- 
nence and dedication to the service of God were a matter of simple 
volition, not only as to their inception, but also as to their duration. 
The male or female devotee was at liberty to return to the world and 
to marry at any time ; l although during the purer periods of perse- 
cution, such conduct was doubtless visited with disapprobation and 
was attended with loss of reputation. As, moreover, there was no 
actual segregation from the world and no sundering of family ties, 
there was no necessity for special rules of discipline. When, under 
the Decian persecution, Paul the Thebeean, and shortly afterwards 
St. Antony, retired to the desert in order to satisfy a craving for 
ascetic mortification which could only be satiated by solitude, and 
thus unconsciously founded the vast society of Egyptian cenobites, 
they gave rise to what at length became a new necessity. 2 The 
associations which gradually formed themselves required some gov- 
ernment, and the institution of monachism became too important a 
portion of the church, both in numbers and influence, to remain long 
without rules of discipline to regulate its piety and to direct its 



texts Matt. xix. 12, Luke xiv. 33 and 
Matt. xix. 21, 27, and then trium- 
phantly concludes — "Ben lice con- 
chiudere chiaramente da'sacri Vangeli 
raccogliersi fossero gli Apostoli veri reli- 
giosi coi tre voti della religione legati." 

1 If further proof of this be required, 
beyond what has already been incident- 
ally adduced, it is to be found in the 
19th canon of the council of Ancyra, 
held about the year 314. By this, the 
vow of celibacy or virginity when 
broken only rendered the oifender in- 
capable of receiving holy orders. He 
was to be treated as a "digamus," 
showing evidently that no punishment 
was inflicted, beyond the disability 
which attached to second marriages. 

Even in the time of St. Augustin 
monks were frequently married, as we 
learn from his remarks concerning the 
heretics who styled themselves Apos- 
tolici and who gloried in their superior 
asceticism — < ' eo quod in suam commu- 
nionem non reciperent utentes conjugi- 
bus et res proprias possidentes ; quales 
habet Catholica [ecclesia] et monachos 
et clericos plurimos." — Augustin. de 
Hseresib. No. XL. 

Even Epiphanius, the ardent ad- 
mirer of virginity, when controverting 



the errors of the same sect, declares 
that those who cannot persevere in their 
vows had better marry and reconcile 
themselves by penitence to the church 
rather than to sin in secret — " Melius 
est lapsum a cursu palam sibi uxorem 
sumere secundum legem et a virginitate 
multo tempore poenitentiam agere et sic 
rursus ad ecclesiam induci, etc." — 
Panar. Haeres. lxi. 

We shall see hereafter how long it 
took to enforce the strict segregation 
of the cenobite from the world. 

2 St. Jerome vindicates for Paul the 
priority which was commonly ascribed 
to Antony, but he fully admits that the 
latter is entitled to the credit of popu- 
larizing the practice. — "Alii, autem, in 
quam opinionem vulgus omne consentit, 
asserunt Antonium hujus propositi ca- 
put, quod ex parte verum est : non enim 
tarn ipse ante omnes fuit, quam ab eo 
omnium incitata sunt studia," etc. — 
Hieron.Vit. Pauli cap. 1. — Epist. xxn. 
ad Eustoch. cap. 36. 

Jerome also asserts that monachism 
was unknown in Palestine and Syria 
until it was introduced there by Hila- 
rion, a disciple of St. Antony. — Vit. 
Hilarion. cap. 14. 



98 



MONACHISM 



powers. As yet, however, a portion of the church, adhering to 
ancient tradition, looked reprovingly on these exaggerated pietistic 
vagaries. Lactantius, for instance, in a passage written subsequent 
to the conversion of Constantine, earnestly denounces the life of a 
hermit as that of a beast rather than of a man, and urges that the 
bonds of human society ought not to be broken, since man cannot 
exist without his fellows. 1 

It was in vain to attempt to stem the tide which had now fairly 
set in, nor is it difficult to understand the impulsion which drove so 
many to abandon the world. No small portion of pastoral duty con- 
sisted in exhortations to virginity, the praises of which were reiter- 
ated with ever increasing vehemence, and the rewards of which, in 
this world and the next, were magnified with constantly augmenting 
promises. Indeed, a perusal of the writings of that age seems to 
render it difficult to conceive how any truly devout soul could remain 
involved in worldly duties and pleasures, when the abandonment of 
all the ties and responsibilities imposed on man by Providence was 
represented as rendering the path to heaven so much shorter and 
more certain, and when every pulpit resounded with perpetual ampli- 
fications of the one theme. Equally efficacious with the timid and 
slothful was the prospect of a quiet retreat from the confusion and 
strife which the accelerating decline of the empire rendered every 
day wilder and more hopeless ; while the crushing burdens of the 
state drove many, in spite of all the efforts of the civil power, to 
seek their escape in the exemptions accorded to those connected with 
the church. When to these classes are added the penitents — proto- 
types of St. Mary of Egypt, who retired to the desert as the only 
refuge from her profligate life, and for seventeen years waged an 
endless struggle with the burning passions which she could control 
but could not conquer — it is not difficult to estimate how vast were 
the multitudes unconsciously engaged in laying the foundations of 
that monastic structure which was eventually to overshadow all 
Christendom. 2 Indeed, even the church itself at times became 
alarmed at the increasing tendency, as when the council of Sara- 
gossa, in 381, found it necessary to denounce the practice of eccle- 



1 Instit. Divin. Lib. vi. cap. 10. — 
Cf. c. 17. 

2 As early as the commencement of 
the fourth century, we find Faustus, 
in his " tu quoque" defence of Mani- 



chseism, asserting that in the Christian 
churches the number of professed vir- 
gins exceeded that of women not bound 
by vows. — Augustin. contra Faust. 
Manich. Lib. xxx. c. iv. 



KAPIDITY OF ITS INCREASE 



99 



siastics abandoning their functions and embracing the monastic life, 
which it assumes was done from unworthy motives. 1 

Soon after his conversion, Constantine had encouraged the pre- 
vailing tendency by not only repealing the disabilities imposed by 
the old Roman law on those who remained unmarried, but by extend- 
ing the power of making wills to minors who professed the intention 
of celibacy. 2 His piety and that of subsequent emperors speedily 
attributed to all connected with the church certain exemptions from 
the intolerable municipal burdens which were eating out the heart of 
the empire. An enormous premium was thus offered to swell the 
ecclesiastical ranks, while, as the number of the officiating clergy 
was necessarily limited, the influx would naturally flow into the mass 
of monks and nuns on whose increase there was no restriction, and 
whose condition was open to all, Avith but slender examination into 
the fitness of the applicant. 3 The rapidly increasing wealth of the 
church, and the large sums devoted to the maintenance of all orders 
of the clergy, offered additional temptations to those who might 
regard the life of the ascetic as the means of securing an assured 
existence of idleness, free from all care of the morrow. If, therefore, 
during a period when ridicule and persecution were the portion of 
those who vowed perpetual continence, it had been found impossible 
to avoid the most deplorable scandals, 4 it can readily be conceived 
that allurements such as these would crowd the monastic profession 
with proselytes of a most questionable character, drawn from a society 
so frightfully dissolute as that of the fourth century. The fierce 
declamations of St. Jerome afford a terrible picture of the disorders 



1 Propter luximi vanitatemque prae- 
sumptam. — Concil. Csesaraug. I. aim. 
381 c. vi. — Disobedience to the pro- 
hibition is threatened with prolonged 
suspension from communion. 

2 Cassiod. Hist. Tripart. Lib. I. c. 9. 

3 See Lib. xvi. Cod. Theod. Tit. ii. 
11. 9, 10, 11, 14, etc. This evil had be- 
come so great by the time of Valens 
that in 365 that emperor declares " Qui- 
dam ignaviaa sectatores desertis civita- 
tum muneribus, captant solitudines ac 
secreta, et specie religionis caetibus mo- 
nizonton congregantur. " The most 
vigorous measures were requisite, " erui 
e latebris consulta praeceptione manda- 
vimus," and he orders the culprits to 
be subjected again to their municipal 
duties under pain of forfeiture of all 



their property (Lib. xn. Cod. Theod. 
Tit. i. 1. 63). In 376 the same emperor 
endeavored to enforce the obligation of 
military service on the crowds of vigo- 
rous men who filled the monasteries, 
and on their resistance a persecution 
arose in which many were killed — 
Hieron. Euseb. Chron. ann. 378. 

4 The lamentations of St. Cyprian 
have already been alluded to. In 305 
the council of Elvira found it necessary 
to denounce perpetual excommunication 
against the "virgines sacratse " who 
abandoned themselves to a life of licen- 
tiousness, while those guilty only of a 
single lapse were allowed restoration to 
communion on the deathbed, if earned 
by continual penitence (Concil. Elib- 
erit. c. 13). 



100 



MONACHISM. 



prevalent among those vowed to celibacy, and of the hideous crimes 
resorted to in order to conceal or remove the consequences of guilt, 
showing that the asceticism enforced by Siricius had not wrought any 
improvement. 1 The necessity of subjecting those bound by vows to 
established rules must therefore have soon become generally recog- 
nized ; and although as we have already seen, they were free at any 
time to abandon the profession which they had assumed, still, while 
they remained as members, the welfare of the church would render 
all right-minded men eager to hail any attempt to establish rules of 
wholesome discipline. The first authoritative attempt to check dis- 
orders of the kind is to be found in the first council of Carthage, 
which in 348 insisted that all who, shunning marriage, elected the 
better lot of chastity, should live separate and solitary, and that none 
should have access to them under penalty of excommunication ; and 
in 381 the Council of Saragossa sought to remedy the evil at its root 
by forbidding virgins to take the veil unless they could furnish proof 
that thay were at least forty years of age. 2 

Although the church, in becoming an affair of state, had to a great 
extent sacrificed its independence, still it enjoyed the countervailing 
advantage of being able to call upon the temporal power for assistance 
when its own authority was defied, nor was it long in requiring this 
aid in the enforcement of its regulations. Accordingly, in 364, we 
find a law of Jovian forbidding, under pain of actual or civil death, 
any attempt to marry a sacred virgin, 3 the extreme severity of which 
is the best indication of the condition of morals that could justify a 
resort to penalties so exaggerated. How great was the necessity for 
reform, and how little was actually accomplished by these attempts, 
may be estimated from an effort of the Council of Valence, in 374, 
to prevent those who married from being pardoned after too short a 
penance, 4 and from the description which ten years later Pope Siricius 



1 Piget dicere quot quotidie virgines 
ruant, quantas de suo gremio mater 
perdat ecclesia: super qua? sidera ini- 
micus superbus ponat thronum suum ; 
quot petras excavet et habitet coluber 
in foraminibus earurn. Videas pleras- 
que viduas antequani nuptas, infelicem 
conscientiam mutata tantum veste 
protegere. Quas nisi tumor uteri, et 
infantum prodiderit vagitus, sanctas 
et castas se esse gloriantur, et erecta 
cervice et ludentibus pedibus incedunt. 
Alise vero sterilitatem prasbibunt, et 
necdum sati hominis bomicidium faci- 



unt. ISTonnullee cum se senserint con 
cepisse de scelere, abortii venena med 
itantur, et frequenter etiam 



commortuse, triurn criminum reoe, ad 
inferos producuntur, bornicidse suae, 
Christi adulters, necdum nati fllii par- 
ricidse — Hieron. Epist. xxn. ad Eus- 
toch. c. 5. 

2 Concil. Carthag. I. c. 3. — Concil. 
Csesaraugust. I. c. 8. 

3 Lib. ix. Cod. Theod. Tit. xxv. 1. 2. 

4 Concil. Valent. I. ann. 374 can. ii. 



EARLY SYSTEMS OF DISCIPLINE. 



101 



gives of the unbridled and shameless license indulged in by both 
sexes in violation of their monastic vows. 1 



Certain definite rules for the governance of these constantly in- 
creasing crowds of all stations, conditions, and characters, who were 
obviously so ill-fitted for the obligations which they had assumed, 
became of course necessary, but it was long before they assumed an 
irrevocable and binding force. The treatise which is known as the 
rule of St. Oriesis is only a long and somewhat mystic exhortation 
to asceticism. That which St. Pachomius is said to have received 
from an angel is manifestly posterior to the date of that saint, and 
probably belongs to the commencement of the fifth century. Minute 
as are its instructions, and rigid as are its injunctions respecting 
every action of the cenobite, yet it fully displays the voluntary 
nature of the profession and the lightness of the bonds which tied 
the monk to his order. A stranger applying for admission to a, 
monastery was exposed only to a probation of a few days, to test his 
sincerity and to prove that he was not a slave ; no vows were im- 
posed, only his simple promise to obey the rules being required. If 
he grew tired of ascetic life, he departed, but he could not be again 
taken back without penitence and the consent of the archimandrite. 2 
Even female travellers applying for hospitality were not refused 
admittance, and an inclosure was set apart for them, where they 
were entertained with special honor and attention ; a place was 
likewise provided for them in which to be present at vespers. 3 

A similar system of discipline is manifested in the detailed state- 
ment of the regulations of the Egyptian monasteries left us by John 
Cassianus, Abbot of St. Victor of Marseilles, who died in 448. No 
vows or religious ceremonies were required of the postulant for 
admission. He was proved by ten days' waiting at the gate, and a 
year's probation inside, yet the slender tie between him and the com- 
munity is shown by the preservation of his worldly garments, to be 
returned to him in case of his expulsion for disobedience or discon- 



1 Postea vero in abruptum conscien- 
tiae desperatione producti, de illicitis 
complexibus libere filios procreaverint, 
quod et publicse leges et ecclesiastica 
juracondemnant. — Siricii Epist. I. c. 6. 

2 Kegul. S. Pachom. c. 26, 79, 95.— 
The Kule which passes under the name 
of John, Bishop of Jerusalem, I believe 



is universally acknowledged to be spu- 
rious and therefore requires no special 
reference. 

8 Ibid. c. 29. This is in particularly 
striking contrast with mediaeval mon- 
achism, which, as we shall see here- 
after, considered the sacred precincts 
polluted by the foot of woman. 



102 MONACHISM. 

tent, and also by the refusal to receive from him the gift of his 
private fortune — although no one within the sacred walls was per- 
mitted to call the simplest article his own — lest he should leave the 
convent and then claim to revoke his donation, as not unfrequently 
happened in institutions which neglected this salutary rule. 1 So, in 
a series of directions for cenobitic life, appended to a curious Arabic 
version of the Nicene canons, the punishment provided for persistent 
disobedience and turbulence is expulsion of the offender from the 
monastery. 2 

As a temporary refuge from the trials of life, where the soul could 
be strengthened by seclusion, meditation, peaceful labor, and rigid 
discipline, thousands must have found the institution of Monachism 
most beneficial who had not resolution enough to give themselves up 
to a life of ascetic devotion and privation. These facilities for 
entrance and departure, however, only rendered more probable the 
admission of the turbulent and the worldly ; and the want of stringent 
and effective regulations must have rendered itself every day more 
apparent, as the holy multitudes waxed larger and more difficult to 
manage, and as the empire became covered with wandering monks, 
described by St. Augustin as beggars, swindlers, and peddlers of false 
relics, who resorted to the most shameless mendacity to procure the 
means of sustaining their idle and vagabond life. 3 

It was this, no doubt, which led to the adoption and enforcement 
of the third of the monastic vows — that of obedience — as being the 
only mode by which during the period when residence was voluntary, 
the crowds of devotees could be kept in a condition of subjection. 
To what a length this was carried, and how completely the system of 
religious asceticism succeeded in its object of destroying all human 
feeling, is well exemplified by the shining example of the holy Mucius, 
who presented himself for admission in a monastery, accompanied by 
his child, a boy eight years of age. His persistent humility gained 
for him a relaxation of the rules, and father and son were admitted 
together. To test his worthiness, however, they were separated, and 

1 Cassian. de Camob. Instit. Lib. I nusquam stantes, nusquain sedentes. 



iv. c. 3, 4, 5, 6, 13. — Cassianus de- 
clares chastity to be the virtue by 
which men are rendered most like 
angels. 

2 De Monach. Decret. can. x. (Har- 
duin. Concil. I. 498.) 

s Nusquam missos, nusquam fixo*. 



Alii membra martyrum, si tamen mar- 
tyrum, venditant ; alii fimbrias et phy- 
lacteria sua rnagnificant . . . et omnes 
petunt, omnes exigunt, aut sumptus 
lucrosse egestatis, aut simulate pretium 
sanctitatis etc. — Augustin. de Opere 
Monachor. cap. 28. 



NECESSITY OF ABSOLUTE RULES 



103 



all intercourse forbidden. His patience encouraged a further trial. 
The helpless child was neglected and abused systematically, but all 
the perverse ingenuity which rendered him a mass of filth and visited 
him with perpetual chastisement failed to excite a sign of interest in 
the father. Finally the abbot feigned to lose all patience with the 
little sufferer's moans, and ordered Mucius to cast him in the river. 
The obedient monk carried him to the bank and threw him in with 
such promptitude that the admiring spectators were barely able to 
rescue him. All that is wanting to complete the hideous picture is 
the declaration of the abbot that in Mucius the sacrifice of Abraham 
was completed. 1 This epitomizes the whole system — the transfer to 
man of the obedience due to God — and shows how little, by this time, 
was left of the hopeful reliance on a beneficent God which dis- 
tinguished the primitive church, and which led Athenagoras, in the 
second century, to argue from the premises " God certainly impels no 
one to those things which are unnatural." 

The weaker sex, whether from the greater value attached to the 
purity of woman or from her presumed frailty, as well as from some 
difference in the nature of the engagement entered into, was the first 
to become the subject of distinct legislation, and the frequency of the 
efforts required shows the difficulty of enforcing the rule of celibacy 
and chastity. Allusion has already been made to a law of Jovian 
which, as early as 364, denounced the attempt to marry a nun as a 
capital crime. Subsequent canons of the church show that this was 
wholly ineffectual. The council of Valence, in 374, endeavored to 
check such marriages. The synod of Rome, in 384, alludes with 
horror to these unions, which it stigmatizes as adultery, and drawing 
a distinction between virgins professed and those who had taken the 
veil, it prescribes an indefinite penance before they can be received 
back into the church, but at the same time it does not venture to 
order their separation from their husbands. 2 A year later, the bolder 
Siricius commands both monks and nuns guilty of unchastity to be 



1 Cassian. Lib. v. c. 27, 28. The ex- 
travagant lengths to which this implicit 
subjection was habitually carried are 
further illustrated by Cassianus in Lib. 
iv. c. 10. 

The same spirit is shown in the story 
told of St. Francis of Assisi, who took 
with him into the garden two novices 
to assist him in planting cabbages. He 
commenced by setting out the vegeta- 



bles with their heads in the earth and 
their roots in the air. One of the 
novices ventured to remonstrate — 
' ' Father, that is not the way to make 
cabbages grow" — "My son," inter- 
rupted the Saint, "you are not fitted 
for our order," — and he dismissed the 
incautious youth on the spot. 

2 Synod. Roman, ann. 384 c. 1, 2. 



104 



MONAGHISM. 



imprisoned, but he makes no allusion to marriage. 1 Notwithstanding 
the fervor of St. Augustin's admiration for virginity and the earnest- 
ness with which he waged war in favor of celibacy, he pronounces 
that the marriage of nuns is binding, ridicules those who consider it 
as invalid, and deprecates the evil results of separating man and wife 
under such circumstances, but yet his asceticism, satisfied with this 
concession to common sense, pronounces such unions to be worse than 
adulterous. 2 From this it is evident that these infractions of disci- 
pline were far from uncommon, and that the stricter churchmen 
already treated such marriages as null and void, which resulted in 
the husbands considering themselves at liberty to marry again. Such 
view of monastic vows was not sustained by the authorities of the 
church, for about the same period Innocent I., like St. Augustin, 
while condemning such marriages as worse than adulterous, admitted 
their validity by refusing communion to the offenders until one of 
the partners in guilt should be dead; and, like the synod of 384, he 
considered the transgression as somewhat less culpable in the pro- 
fessed virgin than in her who had consummated her marriage with 
Christ by absolutely taking the veil. 3 It was probably this assumed 
marriage with Christ — a theory which St. Cyprian shows to be as 
old as the third century, and which is very strongly stated by Inno- 
cent — which rendered the church so much more sensitive as to the 
frailty of the female devotees than to that of the men. As yet, 
however, the stability of such marriages was generally accepted 
throughout the church, for, a few years before the epistle of Inno- 



1 Siricii Epist. 1, c. 6. — A rather 
curious episode in monastic discipline 
is a law promulgated in 890 by Theo- 
dosius the Great prohibiting nuns from 
shaving their heads under severe penal- 
ties. "Feminse quae crinem suum con- 
tra divinas humanasque leges instinctu 
persuasse professionis absciderint ab ec- 
clesise foribus arceantur," and any 
bishop permitting them to enter a church 
is threatened with deposition — Lib. 
xvi. Cod. Theod. Tit. ii. 1. 27. 

* De Bono Viduit. c. 10, 11.— It will 
be seen hereafter that in the twelfth 
century the church adopted as a rule of 
discipline the practices condemned by 
St. Augustin, and that in the sixteenth 
century the council of Trent elevated 
it into a point of faith. 

3 Innocent. Epist. ad Victricium. c. 



12, 13.— The difficulty of the questions 
which arose in establishing the monastic 
system is shown in an epistle of Leo I. 
to the Mauritanian Bishops concerning 
some virgins professed who had suffered 
violence from the Barbarians. He de- 
cides that they had committed no sin, 
and could be admitted to communion if 
they persevered in a life of chastity and 
religious observance, but that they 
could not continue to be numbered 
with the holy maidens, while yet they 
were not to be degraded to the order of 
widows ; and he further requires that 
they shall exhibit their sense of shame 
and humiliation. The problem evi- 
dently was one which transcended the 
acuteness even of Leo to solve — Leonis 
I. Epist. Episcop. per Csesarien. Maur- 
itan. cap. ii. v. (Harduin. I. 1775-6). 



VOWS NOT IRREVOCABLE. 



105 



cent we find it enunciated by the first council of Toledo, which decided 
that the nun who married was not admissible to penitence during the 
life of her husband, unless she separated herself from him. 1 

It is evident from all this that an eifort had been made to have 
such marriages condemned as invalid, and that it had failed. We 
see, however, that the lines had gradually been drawn more tightly 
around the monastic order, that the vows could no longer be shaken 
off with ease, and that there was a growing tendency to render the 
monastic character ineffaceable when once assumed. Towards the 
middle of the fifth century, however, a reaction took place, possibly 
because the extreme views may have been found impracticable. Thus 
Leo I. treats recalcitrant cenobites with singular tenderness. He de- 
clares that monks cannot without sin abandon their profession, and 
therefore that he who returns to the world and marries must redeem 
himself by penitence, for however honorable be the marriage-tie and 
the active duties of life, still it is a transgression to desert the better 
path. So professed virgins, who throw off the habit and marry, 
violate their duty, and those who in addition to this have been regu- 
larly consecrated commit a great crime — and yet no further punish- 
ment is indicated for them ; 2 and the little respect still paid to the 
indelible character claimed for monachism is shown by the manner in 
which the civil power was ready to interfere for the purpose of put- 
ting an end to some of the many abuses arising from monastic insti- 
tutions. In 458 Majorian promulgated a law in which he inveighs 
with natural indignation against the parents who, to get rid of their 
offspring, compel their unhappy daughters to enter convents at a 
tender age, and he orders that, until the ardor of the passions shall 
be tempered by advancing years, no vows shall be administered. 
The minimum age for taking the veil is fixed at forty years and 
stringent measures are provided for insuring its observance. If in- 
fringed by order of the parents, or by an orphan girl of her OAvn 
free will, one-third of all the possessions of the offender is confiscated 
to the state, and the ecclesiastics officiating at the ceremony are 
visited with the heavy punishment of proscription. A woman forced 
into a nunnery, if her parents die before she reaches the age of forty, 
is declared to be free to leave it and to marry, nor can she be dis- 



1 Concil. Toletan. I. c. 16. 

2 Leo. Epist. ad Rusticum c. 12, 13, 
14. So the second council of Aries, in 



441 (can. 52), excommunicates the nun 
who marries until due penance shall 
have been performed, but does not in- 
dicate separation. 



106 



MONACHISM. 



inherited thereafter. 1 Fruitless as this well-intentioned effort proved, 
it is highly suggestive as to the wrongs which were perpetrated under 
the name of religion, the stern efforts felt to be requisite for their 
prevention, and the power exercised to annul the vows. 



In the East, the tendency was to give a more rigid and unalterable 
character to the vows, nor is it difficult to understand the cause. 
Both church and state began to feel the necessity of reducing to sub- 
jection under some competent authority the vast hordes of idle and 
ignorant men who had embraced monastic life. In the West, mona- 
chism was as yet in its infancy, and was to be stimulated rather than 
to be dreaded, but it was far otherwise in the East, where the influ- 
ence of the ascetic ideas of India was much more direct and imme- 
diate. The examples of Antony and Pachomius had brought them 
innumerable followers. The solitudes of the deserts had become 
peopled with vast communities, and as the contagion spread, monas- 
teries arose everywhere and were rapidly filled and enlarged. 2 The 
blindly bigoted and the turbulently ambitious found a place among 
those whose only aim was retirement and peace; while the authority 
wielded by the superior of each establishment, through the blind 
obedience claimed under monastic vows, gave him a degree of power 
which rendered him not only important but dangerous. The monks 
thus became in time a body of no little weight which it behooved the 
church to thoroughly control, as it might become efficient for good or 
evil. By encouraging and directing it, she gained an instrument of 
incalculable force, morally and physically, to consolidate her authority 
and extend her influence. How that influence was used, and how 
the monks became at times a terror even to the state is written 
broadly on the history of the age. Even early in the fifth century 
the hordes of savage Nitrian cenobites were the janizaries of the 
fiery Cyril, with which he lorded it over the city of Alexandria, and 
almost openly bade defiance to the imperial authority. The tumult 
in which Orestes nearly lost his life, the banishment of the Jews, and 
the shocking catastrophe of Hypatia show how dangerous an element 
to society they were even then, when under the guidance of an able 



1 Novell. Majorian. Tit. vi. This 
law continued in force for but five years, 
being abrogated in 463 by Severus. — 
Novell. Severi. Tit. I. 



2 For the ascetic extravagances which 
accompanied the development of mona- 
chism the reader is referred to the vig- 
orous summary by Mr. Lecky in his 
History of European Morals. 



LEGISLATION IN THE EAST. 107 

and unscrupulous leader. 1 So the prominent part taken by the 
monks in the deplorable Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, the 
example of the Abbot Barsumas at the Robber Synod in Ephesus, 
the exploits of Theodosius of Jerusalem and Peter of Antioch, who 
drove out their bishops and usurped the episcopal chairs, the career 
of Eutyches himself, the bloodthirsty rabble of monks who controlled 
the synod of Ephesus and endeavored to overawe that of Chalcedon, 
and, in the succeeding century, the insurrections against the Emperor 
Anastasius which were largely attributed to their efforts — all these 
were warnings not lightly to be neglected. The monks, in fact, 
were fast becoming not only disagreeable but even dangerous to the 
civil power; their organization and obedience to their leaders gave 
them strength to seriously threaten the influence even of the hierarchy, 
and the effort to keep them strictly under subjection and within their 
convent walls became necessary to the peace of both church and state. 
At the council of Chalcedon, in 451, the hierarchy had their 
revenge for the insults which they had suffered two years before in 
the Robber Synod. A large portion of the monks, infected with 
Eutychianism, came into direct antagonism with the bishops, whom 
they defied. With the aid of the civil power, the bishops triumphed, 
and endeavored to put an end for the future to monastic insubordina- 
tion, by placing the monasteries under the direct control and super- 
vision of the secular prelates. A series of canons was adopted which 
declared that monks and nuns were not at liberty to marry; but 
while excommunication was the punishment provided for the offence, 
power was given to the bishops to extend mercy to the offenders. 
At the suggestion of the Emperor Marcian, the council deplored the 
turbulence of the monks who, leaving their monasteries, stirred up 
confusion everywhere, and it commanded them to devote themselves 
solely to prayer and fasting in the spot which they had chosen as a 
retreat from the world. It forbade them to abandon the holy life to 
which they had devoted themselves, and pronounced the dread sen- 
tence of the anathema on the renegades who refused to return and 

1 Socrat. Hist. Eccles. Lib. vn. c. 13, j must restrain the turbulent monks 



14, 15. — Even before this, in the prov- 
ince of Africa, the political utility of 
such enthusiastic disciples had been 
recognized and acted on. At the coun- 
cil of Carthage, in 411, where the 
Donatists were condemned, the Imperial 
Commissioner, in pronouncing sentence, 
warned the Donatist bishops that they 



within their dioceses — " Ii autem qui 
in praesidiis suis circumcellionum turbas 
se habere cognoscunt, sciant nisi eorum 
insolentiam omnimodis comprimere et 
refrenare gestierint, maxime ea loca 
fisco mox occupanda." — Concil. Car- 
thag. ami. 411 Cognit. in. cap. ult. 
(Harduin. I. 1190.) 



108 MONACHISM. 

undergo due penance. No monastery was to be founded without the 
license of the bishop of the locality, and he alone could give permis- 
sion to a monk to leave it for any purpose. 1 

This legislation was well adapted to the end in view, but the evil 
was too deep-seated and too powerful to be thus easily eradicated. 
Finding the church unable to enforce a remedy, the civil power was 
compelled to intervene. As early as 390 Theodosius the Great had 
ordered the monks to confine themselves strictly to deserts and soli- 
tudes. 2 Two years later he repealed this law and allowed them to 
enter the cities. 3 This laxity was abused, and in 466 the Emperors 
Leo and Anthemius issued an edict forbidding for the future all 
monks to go beyond the walls of their monasteries on any pretext, 
except the apocrisarii, or legal officers, on legitimate business alone, 
and these were strictly enjoined not to engage in religious disputes, 
not to stir up the people, and not to preside over assemblages of any 
nature. 4 

History shows us how little obedience this also received, nor is it 
probable that much more attention was paid to the imperial rescript 
when, in 532, Justinian confirmed the legislation of his predecessors, 
and added provisions forbidding those who had once taken the vows 
from returning to the world under penalty of being handed over to 
the curia of their municipality, with confiscation of their property, 
and personal punishment if penniless. 5 Had the effort then been 
successful, he would not have been under the necessity of renewing 
it in 535 by a law making over to the monastery, by way of satis- 
faction to God, the property of any monk presuming to abandon a 
life of religion and returning to the cares of the world. 6 The preva- 
lent laxity of manners is further shown by another provision accord- 
ing to which the monk who received orders was not allowed to 
marry, even if he entered grades in which marriage was permitted 
to the secular clergy, the penalty for taking a wife or a concubine 
being degradation and dismissal, with incapacity for serving the 
state. 7 Ten years later, further legislation was found necessary, and 
at length the final expedient was hit upon, by which the apostate 



1 Concil. Chalced. c. 4, 7, 16. The 
most important of these, the fourth 
canon, was laid before the council by 
the Emperor in person. 

2 Lib. xvi. Cod. Theod. iii. 1. 
s Lib. xvi. Cod. Theod. iii. 2. 



4 Const. 29 Cod. i. 3. 

5 Const. 53 I 1 Cod. I. 3. 

6 Novell, v. c. 4, 6. 

7 Novell, v. c. 8. 



IRREGULARITIES OF THE WESTERN MONKS. 109 

monk was handed over to the bishop to be placed in a monastery, 
from which if he escaped again he was delivered to the secular 
tribunal as incorrigible. 1 The trouble was apparently incurable. 
Three hundred and fifty years later, Leo the Philosopher deplores it, 
and orders all recalcitrant monks to be returned to their convents 
as often as they may escape. As for the morals of monastic life, 
it may be sufficient to refer to the regulation of St. Theodore Stu- 
dita, in the ninth century, prohibiting the entrance of even female 
animals. 2 

Thus gradually the irrevocable nature of monastic vows became 
established in the East, more from reasons of state than from eccle- 
siastical considerations. In the West, matters were longer in reach- 
ing a settlement, and the causes operating were somewhat different. 
Monachism there had not become a terror to the civil power, and its 
management was left to the church ; yet, if its influence was insuf- 
ficient to excite tumults and seditions, it was none the less disorgan- 
ized, and its disorders were a disgrace to those on whom rested the 
responsibility. 

The Latin church was not by any means insensible to this disgrace, 
nor did it underrate the importance of rendering the vows indis- 
soluble, of binding its servants absolutely and forever to its service, 
and of maintaining its character and influence by endeavoring to 
enforce a discipline that should insure purity. During the period 
sketched above, and for the two following centuries, there is scarcely 
a council which did not enact canons showing at once the persistent 
effort to produce these results and the almost insurmountable diffi- 
culty of accomplishing them. It would lead us too far to enter 
upon the minutiae of these perpetually reiterated exhortations and 
threats, or of the various expedients which were successively tried. 
Suffice it to say that the end in view was never lost sight of, while 
the perseverance of the wrongdoer seems to have rivalled that of the 
disciplinarian. The anvil bade fair to wear out the hammer, while 
the confusion and lawlessness of those dismal ages gave constantly 
increasing facilities to those who desired to escape from the strictness 
of the ascetic life to which they had devoted themselves. Thus arose 
a crowd of vagabond monks, gyrovagi, acephali, circilliones, sara- 



1 Novell, cxxiii. c. 42. 

2 S. Theod. Studit. Testament, v. (Max. Bib. Pat. IX. I. 276), 



110 



MONACHISM. 



baitce, who, without acknowledging obedience to any superior, or 
having any definite place of abode, wandered over the face of the 
country, claiming the respect and immunities due to a sacred calling, 
for the purpose of indulging in an idle and dissolute life — vagrants 
of the worst description, according to the unanimous testimony of 
the ecclesiastical authorities of the period. 1 

Thus, up to the middle of the fifth century, no regular system of 
discipline had been introduced in the monastic establishments of the 
Latin church. About that period Cassianus, the first abbot of St. 
Victor of Marseilles, wrote out, for the benefit of the ruder monasti- 
cism of the West, the details of discipline in which he had perfected 
himself among the renowned communities of the East. He deplores 
the absence of any fixed rule in the Latin convents, where every 
abbot governed on the plan which suited his fancy ; where more 
difficulty was found in preserving order among two or three monks 
than the Abbot of Tabenna in the Thebaid experienced with the 
flock of five thousand committed to his single charge ; and where 
each individual retained his own private hoards, which were carefully 
locked up and sealed to keep them from the unscrupulous covetous- 
ness of his brethren. 2 How little all these efforts accomplished is 
clearly manifested when, in 494, we find Gelasius I. lamenting the 
incestuous marriages which were not uncommon among the virgins 
dedicated to God, and venturing only to denounce excommunication 
on the offenders, unless they should avert it by undergoing public 
penance. As for widows who married after professing chastity, he 
could indicate no earthly chastisement, but only held out to them the 
prospect of eternal reward or punishment, and left it for them to 
decide whether they would seek or abandon the better part. 3 Still, 
the irrevocable nature of the vow of celibacy was so little understood 
or respected that in 502 Csesarius, who had just been translated from 



1 St. Benedict of Nursia, tne leal 
founder of Latin monachism, who quit- 
ted the world in 494, thus describes 
the wandering monks of his time: 
" Tertium vero monachorum teterri- 
mum genus est Sarabaitarum . . . qui 
bini aut terni, aut certe singuli sine 
pastore, non Dominicis sed suis inclusi 
ovilibus, pro lege eis est desideriorum 
voluptas ; cum quidquid putaverint 
vel elegerint, hoc dicunt sanctum, et 
quod noluerint putant non licere. 
Quartum vero genus est monachorum 
quod nominatur gyrovagum, qui tota 



vita sua per diversas provincial ternis 
aut quaternis diebus per diversorum 
cellas hospitantur, semper vagi et nun- 
quam stabiles, et propriis voluptatibus 
et guise illecebris servientes, et per 
omnia deteriores Sarabaitis : de quo- 
rum omnium miserrima conversatione 
melius est silere quam loqui." — Eegul. 
S. Benedicti c. 1. 

2 Cassiani de Ccenob. Instit. Lib. n. 
c. 3; Lib. v. c. 1, 15. 

3 Gelasii PP. I. Epist. ix. cap. xx., 



ST. BENEDICT 



111 



the abbacy of a monastery to the bishopric of Aries, wrote to Pope 
Symmachus asking him to issue a precept forbidding marriage to 
nuns, to which the pontiff promptly acceeded. 1 

A new apostle was clearly needed to aid the organizing spirit of 
Rome in her efforts to regulate the increasing number of devotees, 
who threatened to become the worst scandal of the church, and who 
could be rendered so efficient an instrument for its aggrandizement. 
He was found in the person of St. Benedict of Nursia, who, about 
the year 494, at the early age of sixteen, tore himself from the 
pleasures of the world, and buried his youth in the solitudes of the 
Latian Apennines. A nature that could wrench itself away from the 
allurements of a splendid career dawning amid the blandishments of 
Rome was not likely to shrink from the austerities which awe and 
attract the credulous and the devout. Tempted by the Evil Spirit 
in the guise of a beautiful maiden, and finding his resolution on the 
point of yielding, with a supreme effort Benedict cast off his simple 
garment and threw himself into a thicket of brambles and nettles, 
through which he rolled until his naked body was lacerated from 
head to foot. The experiment, though rude, was eminently success- 
ful; the flesh was effectually conquered, and Benedict was never 
again tormented by rebellious desires. 2 A light so shining was not 
created for obscurity. Zealous disciples assembled around him, 
attracted from distant regions by his sanctity, and after various 
vicissitudes he founded the monastery of Monte Casino, on which 
for a thousand years were lavished all that veneration and munifi- 
cence could accumulate to render illustrious the birthplace and 
capital of the great Benedictine Order. 



1 Symmachi PP. Epist. vi. 

2 Greg. Mag. Yit. S. Benedicti c. 2. 
— Juan Cirita, a Spanish saint of the 



twelfth century, was exposed to the 
same temptation as St. Benedict, the 
devil visiting him in the shape of a 
lovely woman who sought refuge from 
her pursuers in his cell. During a 
sleepless night, feeling his resolution 
giving way, he roused his fire and with 
a glowing brand burned his arm to the 
bone, whereupon the devil vanished, 
loading him with reproaches (Henri- 
quez Vit. Joannis Cirita cap. ii.). Le- 
gends of this nature are not uncom- 
mon, nor are there wanting those of 
another class in which the immediate 



and visible agency of the Evil Spirit is 
not called into play. Thus the holy 
Godric, a Welsh saint of the twelfth 
century, endeavored to subdue his 
rebellious flesh in the manner which 
St. Benedict found so effectual, but 
without success. He then buried a 
cask in the earthen floor of his cell, 
filled it with water and fitted it with 
a cover, and in this receptacle he shut 
himself up whenever he felt the titil- 
lations of desire. In this manner, va- 
ried by occasionally passing the night 
up to his chin in a river of which he 
had broken the ice, he finally suc- 
ceeded in mastering his fiery nature. 
— Girald. Cambrens. Gemm. Eccles. 
Dist. ii. c. x. 



& 






112 



MONACHISM. 



The rule promulgated by Benedict, which virtually became the 
established law of Latin Monachism, shows the more practical char- 
acter of the western mind. Though pervaded by the austerest 
asceticism, yet labor, charity, and good works occupy a much more 
prominent place in its injunctions than in the system of the East. 
Salvation was not to be sought simply by abstinence and mortifica- 
tion, and the innate selfishness of the monastic principle was relaxed 
in favor of a broader and more human view of the duties of man to 
his Creator and to his fellows. This gave to the institution a firmer 
hold on the affections of mankind and a more enduring vitality, 
which preserved its fortunes through the centuries, in spite of innu- 
merable aberrations and frightful abuses. 

Still there were as yet no irrevocable vows of poverty, chastity, 
and obedience exacted of the novice. After a year of probation he 
promised, before God and the Saints, to keep the Rule under pain 
of damnation, and he was then admitted with imposing religious 
ceremonies. His worldly garments were, however, preserved, to be 
returned to him in case of expulsion, to which he was liable if incor- 
rigibly disobedient. If he left the monastery, or if he was ejected, 
he could return twice, but after the third admission, if he again 
abandoned the order, he was no longer eligible. 1 Voluntary submis- 
sion was thus the corner-stone of discipline, and there was nothing 
indelible in the engagement which bound the monk to his brethren, 

Contemporary with St. Benedict was St. Caesarius of Aries, whose 
Rule has been transmitted to us by his nephew, St. Tetradius. It 
is very short, but is more rigid than that of Benedict, inasmuch as 
it requires from the applicant the condition of remaining for life in 
the convent, nor will it permit his assumption of the habit until he 
shall have executed a deed bestowing all his property either on his 
relatives or on the establishment of his choice, thus insuring the 
rule of poverty, and depriving him of all inducement to retire. 2 

The Rule of St. Benedict, however, overcame all rivalry, and was 
at length universally adopted ; Charlemagne, indeed, inquired in 811 
whether there could be any monks except those who professed obedi- 
ence to it. 3 Under it were founded the innumerable monasteries 



1 Kegul. S. Benedicti c. 58, 28, 29. 

2 Tetrad. Eegul. c. 1. 

3 Capit. Car. Mag. I. arm. 811 cap. 
xi. He also asks whether there were 
any monks in Gaul before the rule of 



St. Benedict was brought there, and is 
naturally not a little puzzled when told 
that St. Martin of Tours was a monk 
long anterior to the time of Benedict. 
— Capit. II. ann. 811 cap. xii. (Baluz. 
I. 331-2, Ed. Venet.). 



GKEGORY THE GREAT. 



113 



which sprang up in every part of Europe, and were everywhere the 
pioneers of civilization ; which exercised a more potent influence in 
extending Christianity over the Heathen than all other agencies 
combined ; which carried the useful arts into barbarous regions, and 
preserved to modern times whatever of classic culture has remained 
to us. If they were equally efficient in extending the authority of 
the Roman curia, and in breaking down the independence of local 
and national churches, it is not to be rashly assumed that even that 
result was a misfortune, when the anarchical tendencies of the Middle 
Ages were to be neutralized principally by the humanizing force of 
religion, and consolidation was requisite to carry the church through 
the wilderness. Until the thirteenth century the Benedictines were 
practically without rivals, and their numbers and holiness may be 
estimated by the fact that in the fifteenth century one of their his- 
torians computed that the order had furnished fifty-five thousand five 
hundred and five blessed members to the calendar of saints. 1 

Yet it could not but be a scandal to all devout minds that a man 
who had once devoted himself to religious observances should return 
to the world. Not only did it tend to break down the important dis- 
tinction now rapidly developing itself between the clergy and the 
laity, but the possibility of such escape interfered with the control of 
the church over those who formed so large a class of its members, and 
diminished their utility in aiding the progress of its aggrandizement. 
We cannot be surprised, therefore, that within half a century after 
the death of St. Benedict, among the reforms energetically inaugu- 
rated by St. Gregory the Great, in the first year of his pontificate, 
was that of commanding the forcible return of all who abandoned 
their profession — the terms of the decretal showing that no conceal- 
ment had been thought necessary by the renegades in leading a 
secular life and in publicly marrying. 2 Equally determined were his 



1 Quinquaginta quinque millia quingenta 

quinque 
Omnes canonizati a te sunt translati. 
Est monachus sanetus. Caput vero 
Benedictus. — 

(Birck de Monast. Campido- 
nens. c. 25.) 
Bishop Trithemius is more moderate, 
his estimate amounting to only 15,559. 
(Mirsei Orig. Benedict.) 

2 Gregor. PP. I. Lib. i. Epist. 42. 
Six years later he had to repeat his 
commands in stronger terms. (Cf. Lib. 
vii. Epist. 35. Lib. n. Epist. 28. 
Lib. iv. Epist. 27. Lib. x. Epist. 8.) 



Yet when the offender was a man of 
rank and power, as in the case of 
Venantius, Patrician of Syracuse, Greg- 
ory could lay aside the tone of lofty 
command and condescend to tender en- 
treaty and earnest exhortation (Lib. i. 
Epist. 34), without even a threat of ex- 
communication, and remain for years 
on the friendliest terms with him (Lib. 
xi. Epistt. 30, 35, 36), showing that the 
rule was as yet by no means firmly es- 
tablished. In another case, however, 
nothing can be more indignant and 
peremptory than his commands (Lib. 
vin. Epistt. 8, 9). 



114 MONACHISM. 

efforts to reform the abuses which had so relaxed the discipline of 
some monasteries that women were allowed perfect freedom of access, 
and the monks contracted such intimacy with them that they openly 
acted as godfathers to their children; 1 and when, in 601, he learned 
that the monks of St. Vitus, on Mount Etna, considered themselves 
at liberty to marry, apparently without leaving their convent, he 
checked the abuse by the most prompt and decided commands to the 
ecclesiastical authorities of Sicily. 2 

By the efforts of Gregory the monk was thus, in theory at least, 
separated irrevocably from the world, and committed to an existence 
which depended solely upon the church. Cut off from family and 
friends, the door closed behind him forever, and his only aspirations, 
beyond his own personal wants and hopes, could but be for his abbey, 
his order, or the church, with which he was thus indissolubly con- 
nected. There was one exception, however, to this general rule. 
No married man was allowed to become a monk unless his wife 
assented, and likewise became a nun. The marriage-tie was too 
sacred to be broken, unless both parties agreed simultaneously to 
embrace the better life. Thus, on the complaint of a wife, Gregory 
orders her husband to be forcibly removed from the monastery which 
he had entered and to be restored to her. We shall see hereafter 
how entirely the church in time outgrew these scruples, and how in- 
significant the sacrament of marriage became in comparison with that 
of ordination or the vow of religion. 3 

The theory of perpetual segregation from the world was thus es- 
tablished, and it accomplished at last the objects for which it was 
designed, but it was too much in opposition to the invincible tendencies 
of human nature to be universally enforced without a struggle which 
lasted for nearly a thousand years. To follow out in detail the 
vicissitudes of this struggle would require too much space. Its 
nature will be indicated by occasional references in the following 
pages, and meanwhile it will be sufficient to observe how little was ac- 
complished even in his own age by the energy and authority of 
Gregory. It was only a few years after his death that the council of 
Paris, in 615, proves to us that residence in monasteries was not con- 



1 Gregor. PP. I. Lib. iv. Epist. 42. 

2 Gregor. PP. I. Lib. x. Epistt. 22, 
23 — He states ' ' ut etiam monacbis 
ibidem degentibus mulieribus se jungere 



sine metu sit licitum " wbicb be char- 
acterizes as " res . . omnino detesta- 
bilis et nefanda." 

3 Gregor. PP. I. Lib. xi. Epist. 50. 



IRREGULARITIES OF THE SYSTEM. 



115 



sidered necessary for women who took the vows, and that the civil 
power had to be invoked to prevent their marriage. 1 Indeed, it was 
not uncommon for men to turn their houses, nominally at least, into 
convents, living there surrounded with their wives and families, and 
deriving no little worldly profit from the assumption of superior piety, 
to the scandal of the truly religious. 2 St. Isidor of Seville, about 
the same period, copies the words of St. Augustin in describing the 
wandering monastic impostors who lived upon the credulous charity 
of the faithful; 3 and he also enlarges upon the disgraceful license of 
the acephali, or clerks bound by no rule, whose vagabond life and 
countless numbers were an infamy to the western kingdoms which 
they infested. 4 The quotation of this passage by Louis-le-Debon- 
naire, in his attempt to reform the church, shows that these degraded 
vagrants continued to flourish unchecked in the ninth century; 5 and, 
indeed, Smaragdus, in his Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, 
assures us that the evil had rather increased than diminished. 6 



Monachism was but one application of the doctrine of justification 
by works, which, by the enthusiasm and superstition of ages, was 
gradually built into a vast system of sacerdotalism. Through it 
were eventually opened to the mediaeval church sources of illimitable 
power and wealth by means of the complicated machinery of purga- 
tory, masses for the dead, penances, indulgences, &c, under the sole 
control of the central head, to which were committed the power of 
the keys and the dispensation of the exhaustless treasure of salvation 
bestowed on the church by the Redeemer and perpetually increased 
by the merits of the saints. To discuss these collateral themes, 



1 Concil. Parisiens. V. ann. 615 c. 
xiii. — In the decree of Clotair II., con- 
firming the acts of this council, we 
find — " Puellas et viduas religiosas, aut 
sanctimoniales, quae se Deo voverunt, 
tarn quae in propriis domibus resident, 
quam quae in monasteriis positae sunt, 
nullus nee per praeceptum nostrum 
competat, nee trahere nee sibi in con- 
jugio sociare penitus praesumat etc." — 
Edict. Chlot. II. ann. 615 c. xviii. 
(Baluze). 

2 S. Fructuosi Bracarens. Kegul. 
Commun. cap. 1. 

3 De Ecclesiast. Ofl&c. Lib. n. cap. 
xvi. a 7. 



4 Solutos atque oberrantes, sola tur- 
pis vita complectitur et vaga, . . . 
quique dum, nullum metuentes, ex- 
plendae voluptatis suae licentiam con- 
sectantur, quasi animalia bruta, liber- 
tate ac desiderio suo feruntur, habentes 
signum religionis, non religionis offi- 
cium, hippocentauris similes, neque 
equi neque homines, . . . quorum 
quidem sordida atque infami numerosi- 
tate satis superque nostra pars occidua 
pollet. — Ibid. Lib. n. c. iii. 

5 Ludov. Pii de Reform. Eccles. cap. 
100. (Goldast. Const. Imp. III. 199.) 



6 Smaragd. Comment. 
Benedict, c. 1. 



Regul. 



116 MONACHISM. 

however, would carry us too far from our subject, and I must dismiss 
them with the remark that at the period now under consideration 
there could have been no anticipation of these ulterior advantages 
to be gained by assuming to regulate the mode in which individual 
piety might seek to propitiate an offended God. Sufficient motives 
for the assumption existed in the evils and aspirations of the moment 
without anticipating others which only received their fullest develop- 
ment under the skilful logic of the Thomists. 



VIII. 
THE BARBARIANS. 



While the Latin church had thus been engaged in its hopeless 
combat with the incurable vices of a worn-out civilization, it had 
found itself confronted by a new and essentially different task. The 
Barbarians who wrenched province after province from the feeble 
grasp of the Caesars had to be conquered, or religion and culture 
would be involved in the wreck which blotted out the political sys- 
tem of the Empire. The destinies of the future hung trembling in 
the balance, and it might not be an uninteresting speculation to con- 
sider what had been the present condition of the world if Western 
Europe had shared the fate of the East, and had fallen under the 
domination of a race bigoted in its own belief and incapable of 
learning from its subjects. Fortunately for mankind, the invaders 
of the West were not semi-civilized and self-satisfied ; their belief 
was not a burning zeal for a faith sufficiently elevated to meet many 
of the wants of the soul ; they were simple barbarians, who, while 
they might despise the cowardly voluptuaries on whom they trampled,, 
could not fail to recognize the superiority of a civilization awful 
even in its ruins. Fortunately, too, the Latin church was a more 
compact and independently organized body than its Eastern rival, 
inspired by a warmer faith and a more resolute ambition. It faced 
the difficulties of its new position with consummate tact and tireless 
energy ; and whether its adversaries were Pagans like the Franks, or 
Arians like the Goths and Burgundians, by alternate pious zeal and 
artful energy it triumphed where success seemed hopeless, and where 
bare toleration would have appeared a sufficient victory. 

While the celibacy, which bound every ecclesiastic to the church 
and dissevered all other ties, may doubtless be credited with a leading 
share in this result, it introduced new elements of disorder where 
enough existed before. The chaste purity of the Barbarians at their 



77. 
tJL. 



118 



THE BAKBARIANS. 



advent aroused the wondering admiration of Salvianus, as that of 
their fathers four centuries earlier had won the severe encomium of 
Tacitus; 1 but the virtue which sufficed for the simplicity of the 
German forests was not long proof against the allurements accumu- 
lated by the cynicism of Roman luxury. At first the wild converts, 
content with the battle-axe and javelin, might leave the holy functions 
of religion to their new subjects, their strength scarcely feeling the 
restraint of a faith which to them was little more than an idle cere- 
mony; but as they gradually settled down in their conquests, and 
recognized that the high places of the church conferred riches, honor, 
and power, they coveted the prizes which were too valuable to be 
monopolized by an inferior race. Gradually the hierarchy thus be- 
came filled with a class of warrior bishops, who, however efficient in 
maintaining and extending ecclesiastical prerogatives, were not likely 
to shed lustre on their order by the rigidity of their virtue, or to 
remove, by a strict enforcement of discipline, the scandals inseparable 
from endless civil commotions. 

Reference has been made above (p. 80), to the perpetual iteration 
of the canon of celibacy, and of the ingenious devices to prevent its 
violation, by the numerous councils held during this period, showing 
at once the disorders which prevailed among the clergy and the 
fruitlessness of the effort to repress them. The history of the time 
is full of examples illustrating the various phases of this struggle. 

The episcopal chair, which at an earlier period had been filled by 
the votes of the people, and which subsequently came under the 
control of the Papacy, was at this time a gift in the hands of the 
untamed Merovingians, who carelessly bestowed it on him who could 
most lavishly fill the royal coffers, or who had earned it by courtly 
subservience or warlike prowess. The supple Roman or the turbu- 
lent Frank, who perchance could not recite a line of the Mass, thus 
leaped at once from the laity through all the grades; 2 and as he was 



1 De Mor. German, c. 18, 19. It is 
a little singular that Salvianus names 
the Alamanni as the only exception to 
the character for chastity which he he- 
stows on the Barbarians in general. 

2 From such chance allusions as are 
made by Gregory of Tours, this would 
almost seem to be the general rule, and 
not the exception. Thus he mentions 
that Apollinaris obtained the see of 



Ehodez at the solicitation of his wife 
and sister (Hist. Franc. Lib. III. c. 2), 
and shortly afterwards the same episco- 
pate is filled by the appointment of 
" Innocentius Gabalitanorum comes" 
(Ibid. Lib. vi. c. 38). Sulpitius, when 
nominated to that of Bourges, "ad 
clericatum deductus, episcopatum . . . 
suscepit" (Ibid. Lib. vi. c. 39). Bade- 
gisilus, Clotair's mayor of the palace, 
received the bishopric of Le Mans " qui 



MEROVINGIAN FRANCE. 



119 



most probably married, there can be no room for surprise if the rule 
of continence, thus suddenly assumed from the most worldly motives, 
should often prove unendurable. Even in the early days of the 
Frankish conquest we see a cultured noble, like Genebaldus, married 
to the niece of St. Remy, when placed in the see of Laon ostensibly 
putting his wife away and visiting her only under pretext of religious 
instruction, until the successive births of a son and a daughter — 
whom he named Latro and Vulpecula in token of his sin — and we 
may not unreasonably doubt the chronicler's veracity when he informs 
us that the remorse of Genebaldus led him to submit to seven years' 
imprisonment as an expiatory penance. 1 Equally instructive is the 
story of Felix of Nantes, whose wife, banished from his bed on his 
elevation to the episcopate, rebelled against the separation, and, find- 
ing him obdurate to her allurements, was filled with jealousy, believ- 
ing that only another attachment could account for his coldness. 
Hoping to detect and expose his infidelity, she stole into the chamber 
where he was sleeping and saw on his breast a lamb, shining with 
heavenly light, indicative of the peaceful repose which had replaced 
all earthly passions in his heart. 2 A virtue which was regarded as 
worthy of so miraculous a manifestation must have been rare indeed 
among the illiterate and untutored nominees of a licentious court, 
and that it was so in fact is indicated by the frequent injunctions of 
the councils that bishops must regard their wives as sisters ; while a 
canon promulgated by the council of Macon, in 581, ordering that 
no woman should enter the chamber of a bishop without two priests, 
or at least two deacons, in her company, shows how little hesitation 
there was in publishing to the world the suspicions that were generally 
entertained. 3 How the rule was sometimes obeyed by the wild 
prelates of the age, while trampling upon other equally well-known 
canons, is exemplified by the story of Macliaus of Britanny. Chanao, 
Count of Britanny, had made way with three of his brothers; the 
fourth, Macliaus, after an unsuccessful conspiracy, sought safety in 
flight, entered the church, and was created Bishop of Vannes. On 
the death of Chanao, he promptly seized the vacant throne, left the 
church, threw off his episcopal robes, and took back to himself the 



tonsuratus, gradus quos clerici sortiun- 
tur ascensus," was duly installed (Ibid. 
Lib. vi. c. 9). Indeed, in his catalogue 
of the Bishops of Tours, Gregory spec- 
ifies of Euphronius, the eighteenth 
bishop, that he was "ab ineunte setate 



clericus," showing how unusual it was 
to be regularly bred to the church. 

1 Hincmari Vit. S. Kemigii c. 42, 43. 

2 Greg. Turon. de Glor. Confess, c. 78 

3 Concil. Matiscon. I. c. 3. 



120 THE BARBARIANS. 

wife whom he had quitted on obtaining the see of Vannes — for all 
of which he was duly excommunicated by his brother prelates. 1 

When such was the condition of morals and discipline in the high 
places of the church, it is not to be wondered at if the second council 
of Tours, in 567, could declare that the people suspect, not indeed 
all, but many of the arch-priests, vicars, deacons, and subdeacons, of 
maintaining improper relations with their wives, and should com- 
mand that no one in orders should visit his own house except in 
company with a subordinate clerk, without whom, moreover, he was 
never to sleep ; the clerk refusing the performance of the duty to be 
whipped, and the priest neglecting the precaution to be deprived of 
communion for thirty days. Any one in orders found with his wife 
was to be excommunicated for a year, deposed, and relegated among 
the laity; while the arch-priest who neglected the enforcement of 
these rules was to be imprisoned on bread and water for a month. 
An equally suggestive illustration of the condition of society is 
afforded by another canon, directed against the frequent marriages of 
nuns, who excused themselves on the ground that they had taken the 
veil to avoid the risk of forcible abduction. Allusion is made to the 
laws of Childebert and Clotair, maintained in vigor by Charibert, 
punishing such attempts severely, and girls who anticipate them are 
directed to seek temporary asylum in the church until their kindred 
can protect them under the royal authority, or find husbands for them. 2 

Morals were even worse among the Arian Wisigoths of Spain than 
among the orthodox believers of France. It is true that priestly 
marriage formed no part of the Arian doctrines, but as the heresy 
originated prior to the council of Nicaea, and professed no obedience to 
that or any other council or decretal, its practice in this respect was 
left to such influence as individual asceticism might exercise. Having 
no acknowledged head to promulgate general canons or to insist upon 
their observance, no rule of the kind, even if theoretically admitted, 
could be effectually enforced. How little, indeed, the rule was 
obeyed is shown by the proceedings of the third council of Toledo, 



1 Greg. Turon. Hist. Franc. Lib. iv. | Franc. Lib. viii. cap 19) has been as- 
c. 4. At this period the church of Bri- j sumed to indicate that priests could 
tanny was rather British than Frankish. legitimately have commerce with their 
See Haddan & Stubbs, II. 72 sqq. wives. By comparing it with the 

j canons cited above, however, it evi- 

2 Concil. Turon. II. c. 19, 20. — A j dently can at the most have reference 
remark of Gregory of Tours (Hist. ! to the lower orders of the clergy. 



SPAIN. 



121 



held in 589 to confirm the reunion of the Spanish kingdom with the 
orthodox church. It complains that even the converted bishops, 
priests, and deacons are found to be publicly living with their wives, 
which it forbids for the future under threat of degrading all recalci- 
trants to the rank of lector. 1 The conversion of the kingdom to 
Catholicism did not improve matters. The clergy continued not only 
to associate with their wives, but also to marry openly, for the secular 
power was soon afterwards forced to interfere, and King Recared I. 
issued a law directing that any priest, deacon, or sub deacon connect- 
ing himself with a woman by marriage or otherwise, should be sepa- 
rated from his guilty consort by either the bishop or judge, and be 
punished according to the canons of the church, while the unfortunate 
woman was subjected to a hundred lashes and denied all access to 
her husband. To insure the enforcement of the edict, the heavy mulct 
of two pounds of gold was levied on any bishop neglecting his duty 
in the premises. 2 Recared also interposed to put a stop to the fre- 
quent marriages of nuns, whose separation from their husbands and 
condign punishment were decreed, with the enormous fine of five 
pounds of gold exacted of the careless ecclesiastic who might neglect 
to carry the law into effect — a fair measure of the difficulties experi- 
enced in enforcing the rule of celibacy. 3 This legislation had little 
effect, for a half century later the eighth council of Toledo, in 653, 
shows us that all ranks of the clergy, from bishops to subdeacons, 
had still no scruple in publicly maintaining relations with wives and 
concubines; 4 and, despite these well-meant efforts, clerical morals 
went from bad to worse until the licentious reign of King Witiza 
broke down all the accustomed barriers. According to the monkish 
chroniclers, that reckless prince issued, in 706, a law authorizing not 
only polygamy but unlimited concubinage to both laity and clergy ; 
a privilege of which it is not unreasonable, from what we have seen, 
to suppose that they largely availed themselves. 5 There seems to be 
no record of any remonstrance on the part of the Gothic prelates, 
and when, three years later, Pope Constantine took cognizance of the 



1 Concil. Toletan. III. c. 5. 

2 L. Wisigoth. Lib. in. Tit. iv. 1. 18. 
This law is preserved in the Fuero 
Juzgo, or mediaeval Eomance version of 
the code (Lib. in. Tit. iv. ley 18). 

3 L. Wisigoth. Lib. in. Tit. v. 1. 2. 

4 Concil. Toletan VIII. ann. 653 

can iv. v. vi. — These measures were as 



fruitless as the preceding. Cf. Concil. 
Toletan. IX. ann. 655 can. x. 

5 Bex Witiza se effrenate prascipitans 
per omne genus flagitii, legem nequis- 
simam tulit ; ut more sara(ce)norum 
cuilibet laico et clerico liceret, quotquot 
posset alere, uxores et concubinas im- 
pune domi suae retinere. — Liutprandi 
Chron. No. 174 ann. 706. 



122 



THE BARBARIANS. 



innovation, and threatened Witiza with dethronement if he should 
not abrogate his iniquitous legislation, the monarch retorted with a 
promise to repeat the exploits of his predecessor Alaric, in sacking 
and plundering the Apostolic city. It is a little singular, however, 
that one of the first acts of the usurper, Don Roderic, in 711, was 
the repeal of this obnoxious law. 1 If he had any intentions of 
undertaking the reform of his subjects' morals, however, his adventure 
with Count Julian's daughter and the Saracenic invasion caused its 
indefinite postponement. 

Italy was almost equally far removed from the ideal purity of 
Jerome and Augustin. In the early part of the sixth century was 
fabricated an account of a supposititious council, said to have been 
held in Rome by Silvester I., and the neglect of celibacy is evident 
when it was felt to be necessary to insert in this forgery a canon 
forbidding marriage to priests, under penalty of deprivation of func- 
tions for ten years. 2 Even in this it is observable that there was no 
thought of annulling the marriage, as subsequently became established 
in orthodox doctrines. Nothing can be more suggestive of the 
demoralization of the Italian church than the permission granted 
about the year 580 by Pelagius II. for the elevation to the diaconate 
of a clerk at Florence, who while a widower had had children by a 
concubine. What renders the circumstance peculiarly significant is 
the fact that the Pope pleads the degeneracy of the age as his apology 
for this laxity. 3 

Such was the condition of the Christian world when Gregory the 
Great, in 590, ascended the pontifical throne. He was too devout a 
churchman and too sagacious a statesman not to appreciate thoroughly 
the importance of the canon in all its various aspects — not only as 
necessary to ecclesiastical purity according to the ideas of the age, 
but also as a prime element in the influence of the church over the 
minds of the people, as well as an essential aid in extending ecclesi- 
astical power, and in retaining undiminished the enormous possessions 
acquired by the church through the munificence of the pious. The 



1 Liutprandi Chron. No. 181 ann. 
709; No. 188 ann. 711. Without enter- 
ing into the question of the correctness 
with which this chronicle has heen 
attributed to Liutprand of Cremona, 
I may say that it has every appearance 
of being an authentic remnant of an- 



tiquity (Cf. Antonii Biblioth. Hispan. 
I. 585). 

2 Concil. Koman. sub Silvest. can. 
xix. (Migne's Patrol. VIII. 840). 

3 Pelagii PP. II. Epist. xiv. 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 



123 



prevailing laxity, indeed, was already threatening serious dilapidation 
of the ecclesiastical estates and foundations. How clearly this was 
understood is shown by Pelagius I. in 557, when he refused for a 
year to permit the consecration of a bishop elected by the Syracusans. 
On their persisting in their choice he wrote to the Patrician Cethegus, 
giving as the reason for his opposition the prelate's wife and children, 
by whom, if they survive, the substance of the church is wont to be 
jeopardized; 1 and his consent was finally given only on the condition 
that the bishop elect should provide competent security against any 
conversion of the estate of the diocese for the benefit of his family, 
a detailed statement of the property being made out in advance to 
guard against attempted infractions of the agreement. That this 
was not a merely local abuse is evident from a law of the Wisigoths, 
which provides that on the accession of any bishop, priest, or deacon, 
an accurate inventory of all church possessions under his control 
shall be made by five freemen, and that after his death an inquest 
shall be held for the purpose of making good any deficiencies out of 
the estate of the decedent, and forcing the restoration of anything 
that might have been alienated. 2 

There evidently was ample motive for a thorough reformation, 
and Gregory accordingly addressed himself energetically to the 
work of enforcing the canons. In his decretals there are numerous 
references to the subject, showing that he lost no opportunity of 
reviving the neglected rules of discipline regarding the ordination of 
digami, 3 the residence of women, and abstinence from all intercourse 
with the sex. 4 In his zeal he even went so far as to decree that any 
one guilty of even a single lapse from virtue should be forever 
debarred from the ministry of the altar 5 — a law nullified by its own 



1 Superstes uxor aut filii, per quos 
ecclesiastica solet periclitari substantia. 
— Pelagii PP. I. Cethego Patricio. 

2 L. Wisigoth. Lib. v. Tit. i. 1. 2. 

3 Gregor. PP. I. Lib. xm. Epist. 6. 
— This rule had come to be very gen- 
erally neglected. The importance 
attached to it, however, by strict disci- 
plinarians is well illustrated in the firm- 
ness displayed by John, Patriarch of 
Alexandria, a contemporary of Gregory, 
whose bountiful charity had earned for 
him the title of Eleemosynarius. In a 
time of extreme famine, a wealthy 
aspirant offered him 200,000 bushels of 
corn and 100 pounds of gold for the 



grade of deacon. He had unluckily 
been twice married, and John refused 
the dazzling bribe, although the epis- 
copal treasury had been exhausted in 
relieving the necessities of the suffering- 
people (Thomassin, Discip. de PEglise, 
Pt. ii. Liv. 3, c. 15.) 

4 Gregor. PP. I. Lib. xm. Epistt. 35, 
36. 

5 Ibid. Lib. iv. Epist. 26; Lib. v. 
Epist. 3 ; Lib. viii. Epist. 24. — Similar 
attempts had previously been made by 
sundry provincial councils. In the case 
of Andrew, Bishop of Tarentum, who 
was accused of maintaining relations 
with a former concubine, Gregory rec- 



124 



THE BARBARIANS. 



severity, which rendered its observance impossible. In 587, his 
predecessor Pelagius had ordered that in Sicily the Roman rule 
should be followed of separating subdeacons from their wives, but it 
appeared cruel to Gregory that this should be enforced on those who 
had no warning of such rigor when accepting the subdiaconate, and 
one of the earliest acts of his pontificate was to allow them to resume 
relations with their wives ; but he ordered that they should abstain 
from all service of the altar, and that in future no one should be 
admitted to that grade who would not formally take a vow of con- 
tinence. 1 There is not much trace in contemporary history of any 
improvement resulting from these efforts, and towards the very close 
of his pontificate, in 602, we find him entreating Queen Brunhilda 
to exercise her power in restraining the still unbridled license of the 
Frankish clergy — a task which he assures her is essential if she 
desires to transmit her possessions in peace to her posterity. 2 He 
also endeavored to reform the perennial abuse of the residence of 
women, a reform which the church has been vainly attempting ever 
since the canon of Nicsea. 3 That Gregory's zeal, however, exercised 
some influence is manifested by the fact that tradition in the Middle 
Ages occasionally associated his name with the introduction of celi- 
bacy in the church. The impression which he produced is shown by 
the wild legend which relates that, soon after issuing and strictly 
enforcing a decretal on the subject, he happened to have his fish- 
ponds drawn off, when the heads of no less than six thousand infants 
were found in them — the offspring of ecclesiastics, destroyed to avoid 
detection — which filled him with so much horror that he abandoned 
the vain attempt. 4 Yet in Italy the residence of wives was still 
permitted to those in orders, under the restriction that they should 
be treated as sisters ; 5 and Gregory relates as worthy of all imitation 
the case of a holy priest of Nursia who, following the example of 
the saints in depriving himself of even lawful indulgences, had per- 
sistently relegated his wife to a distance. When at length he lay on 
his death-bed, to all appearance inanimate, the wife came to bid him 



ognizing the impossibility of obtaining 
proof, leaves it to his own conscience. 
If he has had any commerce with her 
since his ordination, he is commanded 
at once to resign his position as the 
only mode of insuring his salvation 
(Ibid. Lib. in. Epistt. 45, 46). 

1 Ibid. Lib. i. Epist. 44; Lib. iv. 
Epistt. 5, 36. 



2 Ibid. Lib. xi. Epist. 69. 

3 Ibid. Lib. ix. Epist. 106. 

* Udalric. Bamberg. Cod. Lib. n. 
Epist. 10. 

5 Gregor. PP. I. Lib. I. Epist. 52; 
Lib. ix. Epist. 60. 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 125 

a last farewell, and placed a mirror to his lips, to see whether life 
was jet extinct. Her kindly ministrations roused the dominant 
asceticism in his expiring soul, and he gathered strength enough to 
exclaim, "Woman, depart! Take away the straw, for there is yet 
fire here" — which supreme effort of self-immolation procured him 
on the instant a beatific vision of St. Peter and St. Paul, during 
which he lapsed ecstatically into eternity. 1 

In considering so thoroughly artificial a system of morality, it is 
perhaps scarcely worth while to inquire into the value of a virtue 
which could only be preserved by shunning temptation with so 
scrupulous a care. 

1 Gregor. PP. I. Dial. Lib. iv. cap. xi. 



IX. 
THE CARLOVINGIANS 



Even the energy and authority of Gregory the Great were power- 
less to restore order in the chaos of an utterly demoralized society. 
In Spain, the languishing empire of the Wisigoths was fast sinking 
under the imbecility which invited the easy conquest of the Saracens. 
In France, Brunhilda and Fredegonda were inflaming the fierce con- 
tentions which eventually destroyed the Merovingian dynasty, and 
which abandoned the kingdom at once to the vices of civilization 
and the savage atrocities of barbarism. 1 In Italy, the Lombards, 
more detested than any of their predecessors, by their ceaseless rav- 
ages made the Ostrogothic rule regretted, and gleaned with their 
swords such scanty remnants of plunder as had escaped the hordes 
which had successively swept from the gloomy forests of the North 
across the rich valleys and fertile plains of the mistress of the world. 
Anarchy and confusion everywhere scarce offered a field for the 
exercise of the humbler virtues, nor could the church expect to 
escape the corruption which infected every class from which she 
could draw her recruits. Still, amid the crowd of turbulent and 
worldly ecclesiastics, whose only aim was the gratification of the 
senses or the success of criminal ambition, some holy men were to 
be found who sought the mountain and forest as a refuge from the 
ceaseless and all-pervading disorder around them. St. Gall and St. 
Columba, Willibrod and Boniface, were types of these. Devoted to 
the severest asceticism, burying themselves in the wilderness and 
subsisting on such simple fare as the labor of their hands could 
wring from a savage land, the selfishness of the anchorite did not 



1 In 649 we find Amandus, Bishop 
of Maestricht, resigning his office on 
account of the impossibility of en- 
forcing the canons among his priests 
and deacons. Martin I. endeavored to 



dissuade him from his purpose, and 
urged his proceeding with the utmost 
rigor against all transgressors (Hartz- 
heim Concil. German. I. 28). 



DEMOBALIZATION OF THE AGE. 127 

extinguish in them the larger aims of the Christian, and by their 
civilizing labors among the heathen they proved themselves worthy 
disciples of the Apostles. 

Thicker grew the darkness as Tarik drove the Gothic fugitives 
before him on the plains of Xeres, and as the house of Pepin d'He- 
ristel gradually supplanted the long-haired descendants of Clovis. 
The Austrasian Mayors of the Palace had scanty reverence for mitre 
and crozier, and it is a proof how little hold the clergy had earned 
upon the respect and affection of the people, when the usurpers in 
that long revolution did not find it necessary to conciliate their sup- 
port. In fact, the policy of those shrewd and able men was rather 
to oppress the church and to parcel out its wealth and dignities 
among their warriors, who made no pretence of piety nor deigned 
to undertake the mockery of religious duties. Rome could interpose 
no resistance to these abuses, for, involved alternately in strife with 
the Lombards and the Iconoclastic Emperors, the Popes implored 
the aid of the oppressor himself, and were in no position to protest 
against the aggressions which he might commit at home. 

In Italy, the condition of discipline may be inferred from the fact 
that, in 721, Gregory II. considered it necessary to call a synod for 
the special purpose of condemning incestuous unions and the mar- 
riages of nuns, which he declared were openly practised, 1 and the 
canons then promulgated received so little attention that they had to 
be repeated by another synod in 732. 2 In fact, the vow of chastity 
was frequently taken by widows that they might escape a second 
marriage and thus be able to live in shameless license without being 
subject to the watchful control of a husband, and an edict of Arechis 
Duke of Beneventum about the year 774 orders that all such godless 
women shall be seized and shut up in convents. 3 That the secular 
clergy should consider ordination no bar to matrimony need therefore 
excite little surprise. There is extant a charter of Talesperianus, 
Bishop of Lucca, in 725, by which he confirms a little monastery 
and hospital to Romuald the priest and his wife — "presbiteria sua." 
The document recites that this couple had come on a pilgrimage from 
beyond the Po ; that they had settled in the lands of the Convent of 
St. Peter and St. Martin in the diocese of Lucca, where they had 
bought land and built the institution which the good bishop thus 

• l Concil. Eoman. aim. 721. I 3 Capitul. Arechis Benevent. cap. 

' Chron. Gradensis Supplement. I XI1 " ( Canciani L 262 )- 



128 THE CAKLOVINGIANS. 

confirms to them with certain privileges. He evidently felt that 
there was nothing irregular in their maintaining the connection, and 
he lays upon them no conditions of separation. 1 

In France, it may be readily believed that discipline was even 
more neglected. For eighty years scarce a council was held; no 
attempts were made to renew or enforce the rules of discipline, and 
the observances of religion were at length well-nigh forgotten. In 
726, Boniface even felt scruples as to associating in ordinary inter- 
course with men so licentious and depraved as the Frankish bishops 
and priests, and he applied to Gregory II. for the solution of his 
doubts. Gregory, in reply, ordered him to employ argument in 
endeavoring to convince them of their errors, and by no means to 
withdraw himself from their society, 2 a politic toleration of vice con- 
trasting strangely with his fierce defiance of the iconoclastic heresy 
of Leo the Isaurian, when he risked the papacy itself in his eagerness 
to preserve his beloved images. 

When, however, the new dynasty began to assume a permanent 
position, it sought to strengthen itself by the influence of the church. 
Like the modern Charlemagne, it saw in a restoration of religion a 
means of assuring its stability by linking its fortunes with those of 
the hierarchy. A radical in opposition becomes of necessity a con- 
servative in power ; and the arts which had served to supplant the 
hereditary occupants of the throne were no longer advisable after 
success had indicated a new line of policy. As Clovis embraced 
Christianity in order to consolidate his conquests into an empire, so 
Carloman and Pepin-le-Bref sought the sanction of religion to con- 
secrate their power to their descendants, and the Carlovingian system 
thenceforth became that of law and order, organizing a firm and 
settled government out of the anarchical chaos of social elements. 

It was the pious Carloman who first saw clearly how necessary 
was the aid of the church in any attempt to introduce civilization 
and subordination among his turbulent subjects. Immediately on 
his accession, he called upon St. Boniface to assist him in the work, 
and the Apostle of Germany undertook the arduous task. How 
arduous it was may be conceived from his description of the utterly 
demoralized condition of the clergy, when he appealed to Pope Zach- 
ary for advice and authority to assist in eradicating the frightful 

1 Muratori Antiq. Med. ^Evi Dissert, lxxiv. 

2 Gregor. VT. II. Epist. 14 cap. 12. 



DEMORALIZATION OF THE AGE. 



129 



promiscuous licentiousness which was displayed with careless cynicism 
throughout all grades of the ecclesiastical body. 1 The details are too 
disgusting for translation, but the statement can readily be believed 
when we see what manner of men filled the controlling positions in 
the hierarchy. 

Charles Martel had driven out St. Rigobert, Archbishop of Rheims, 
and had bestowed that primatial see on one of his warriors named 
Milo, who soon succeeded in likewise obtaining possession of the 
equally important archiepiscopate of Treves. 2 Milo was himself an 
indication of the prevailing laxity of discipline, for he was the son 
of Basinus his predecessor in the see of Treves. 3 He is described 
as being a clerk in tonsure, but in every other respect an irreligious 
laic, yet Boniface, with all the aid of his royal patrons, was unable 
to oust him from his inappropriate dignities, and in 752, ten years 
after the commencement of his reforms, we find Pope Zachary, in 
response to an appeal for advice, counselling him to leave Milo and 
other similar wolves in sheep's clothing to the divine vengeance. 4 
Boniface, apparently, found it requisite to follow this advice and the 
divine vengeance did not come until Milo had enjoyed his incongru- 
ous dignities for forty years, when at length he was removed by an 
appropriate death, received from a wild boar in hunting. 5 He was 
only a type of many others who openly defied all attempts to remove 



1 Modo autem maxima ex parte 
episcopales sedes traditae sunt laicis 
cupidis ad possidendum, vel adulte- 
ratis clericis, scortatoribus et publi- 
canis sseculariter ad perfraendum . . . 
Si invenero inter illos diaconos quos 
nominant, qui a pueritia sua semper 
in stupris, semper in adulteriis et in 
omnibus semper spurcitiis vitam du- 
centes, sub tali testimonio venerunt 
ad diaconatum, et modo in diaconatu 
concubinas quatuor vel quinque vel 
plures noctu in lecto habentes, evan- 
gelium tamen legere et diaconos se 
nominare non erubescunt, nee metu- 
unt : et sic in talibus incestis ad ordi- 
nem presbyteratus venientes, in iis- 
dem peccatis perdurantes, et peccata 
peccatis adjicientes, presbyteratus of- 
ficio fungentes, dicunt se pro populo 
posse intercedere, et sacras oblationes 
offerre. Novissime, quod pejus est, 
sub talibus testimoniis per gradus sin- 
gulos ascendentes, ordinantur et no- 
minantur episcopi. Si usquam tales 



invenero inter illos, rogo ut babeam 
praeceptum et conscriptum auctorita- 
tis vestrae, quid de talibus diffiniatis, 
ut per responsum Apostolicum convin- 
cantur et arguantur peccatores. — Boni- 
facii Epist. 132. 

2 Milo quidam, tonsura clericus, 
moribus, habitu, et actu irreligiosus 
laicus, episcopi a Kemorum ac Trevi- 
rorum usurpans insimul, per multos 
annos pessumdederit. — Hincmar. Epist. 
xxx. c. 20. — Sola tonsura clerico, qui 
secum processerat ad bellum. — Flo- 
doard. Hist. Kemens. Lib. n. c. 12. — 
Nihilque in eo de clericali honore vel 
vita nisi sola tonsura enituit. — Hist. 
Trevirens. (D'Achery Spicileg. II. 212). 

3 Hist. Trevirens. (D'Achery Spici- 
leg. II. 212). 

4 Bonifacii Epist. 142. 

5 Hist. Trevirens. loc. cit. 



130 



THE CARLOVINGIANS. 



them. One, who is described as "pugnator et fornicator," gave up, 
it is true, the spiritualities of his see, but held to the temporalities 
with a gripe that nothing could loosen ; another utterly disregarded 
the excommunications launched at his head, and Zachary and Boni- 
face at last were fain to abandon him to his evil courses. 1 Somewhat 
more success, indeed, he had with Gervilius, son and successor to 
Geroldus, Bishop of Mainz. The latter, accompanying Carloman in 
an expedition against the Saxons, was killed in battle. Bishop Ger- 
vilius, in another foray, recognized his father's slayer, invited him to 
a friendly interview, and treacherously stabbed him, exclaiming, in 
the rude poetry of the chronicler, "Accipe jam ferrum quo patrem 
vindico carum." This act of filial piety was not looked upon as 
unclerical, until Boniface took it up ; Gervilius was finally forced to 
abandon the see of Mainz, and it was given to Boniface himself. 2 
When such were the prelates, it is not to be supposed that rules of 
abstinence and asceticism received much attention from their subor- 
dinates. Boniface admits, in an epistle to King Ecgberht, that, in 
consequence of the universal licentiousness, he was compelled to 
restore the guilty to their functions after penitence, as the canonical 
punishment of dismissal would leave none to perform the sacred 
offices. 3 What the church, however, could not prevent on earth, it 
at least had the satisfaction of seeing punished in the future life. It 
was principally for the support given to Milo of Bheims among his 
many other similar misdeeds, that Charles Martel was condemned to 
eternal torture, which was, as a wholesome example, made manifest 
to the most incredulous. St. Eucherius, in a vision, saw him plunged 
into the depths of hell, and on consulting St. Boniface and Fulrad 
Abbot of St. Denis, it was resolved to open Charles's tomb. The 
only tenant of the sepulchre was found to be a serpent, and the walls 
were blackened as though by fire, thus proving the truth of the reve- 
lation, and holding out an awful warning to future wrongdoers. 4 

How much of the license complained of was indiscriminate con- 
cubinage, and how much was merely intercourse with legitimate 
wives, we have no means of ascertaining. The latter Boniface suc- 
ceeded in suppressing, for the church could control her sacraments. 5 
The former was beyond his power. 



1 Bonifacii loc. cit. 

3 Othlon. Vit. S. Bonifac. Lib. i. c. 



44. 



3 Bonifacii Epist. 85. 



4 Elodoard. Hist. Bemens. Lib. n. 
cap. 12. — Capit. Caroli Calvi Tit. 
xxvu. cap. 7 (Baluze). 

5 Et tarn laicorum injusta concubi- 



REFORMS OF BONIFACE 



131 



Armed with full authority from Pope Zachary, Carloman and 
Boniface commenced the labor of reducing to order this chaos of 
passion and license. Under their auspices a synod was held, April 
23, 742, in which all unchaste priests and deacons were declared 
incapable of holding benefices, were degraded and forced to do pen- 
ance. Bishops were required to have a witness to testify to the 
purity of their lives and doctrines, before they could perform their 
episcopal functions. For all future lapses from virtue, priests were 
to be severely whipped and imprisoned for two years on bread and 
water, with prolongation of the punishment at the discretion of their 
bishops. Other ecclesiastics, monks, and nuns were to be whipped 
thrice and similarly imprisoned for one year, besides the stigma of 
having the head shaved. All monasteries, moreover, were to adopt 
and follow rigidly the rule of St. Benedict. 1 

The stringency of these measures shows not only the extent of 
the evil requiring such means of cure, but the fixed determination 
of the authorities to effect their purpose. The clergy, however, did 
not submit without resistance. It is probable that they stirred up 
the people, and that signs of general disapprobation were manifested 
at a rigor so extreme in punishing faults which for more than two 
generations had passed wholly unnoticed, for during the same year 
Zachary addressed an epistle to the Franks with the object of enlisting 
them in the cause. The ill-success of their arms against the Pagans 
he attributes to the vices of their clergy, and he promises them that 
if they show themselves obedient to Boniface, and if they can enjoy 
the prayers of pure and holy priests, they shall in future have an 
easy triumph over their heathen foes. 2 Yet many adulterous priests 
and bishops, noted for the infamy of their lives, pretended that they 
had received from Rome itself dispensations to continue in their 
ministry — an allegation which Zachary of course repelled with 
indignation. 3 

Carloman, however, pursued his self-imposed task without flinching. 
On March 1st, 743, he held another synod at Leptines, where the 
clergy promised to observe the ancient canons, and to restore the 
discipline of the church. The statutes enacted the previous year 



naram copula partim exhortante 
sancto viro separata est, quam etiam 
clericorum nefanda cum uxoribus con- 
junctio sejuncta ac separata. — Willi- 
bald. Vit. S. Bonifac. c. 9. 



1 Capit. Caroloman. ann. 742 c. 1, 
3, 6. 

2 Bonifacii Epist. 137. 

3 Ibid. Epist. 132, 142. 



132 



THE CARLOVINGIANS 



were again declared to be in full vigor for future offences, while for 
previous ones penitence and degradation were once more decreed. 1 

These regulations affected only Austrasia, the German portion of 
the Frankish empire, ruled by Carloman. His brother, Pepin-le- 
Bref, who governed Neustria, or France, was less pious, and had not 
apparently as yet recognized the policy of reforming out of their 
possessions the warrior vassals whom his father had gratified with 
ecclesiastical benefices. At length, however, he was induced to lend 
his aid, and in 744 he assembled a synod at Soissons for the purpose. 
So completely had the discipline of the church been neglected and 
forgotten, that Pepin was obliged to appeal to Pope Zachary for an 
authoritative declaration as to the grades in which marriage was pro- 
hibited. 2 Yet his measures were but lukewarm, for he contented 
himself with simply forbidding unchastity in priests, the marriage 
of nuns, and the residence of stranger women with clerks, no special 
punishment being threatened, beyond a general allusion to existing 



Thus assailed by both the supreme ecclesiastical and temporal 
authorities, the clergy still were stubborn. Some defended them- 
selves as being legitimately entitled to have a concubine — or rather, 
we may presume, a wife. Among these we find a certain Bishop 
Clement described as a pestilent heresiarch, with followers who main- 
tained that his two children, born during his prelacy, did not unfit 
him for his episcopal functions ; and a synod held in Kome, October 
31st, 745, was required for his condemnation, the local authorities 
apparently proving powerless. Even this was not sufficient, for in 
January, 747, we find Zachary directing Boniface to bring him 
before a local council, and if he still proved contumacious, to refer 
the matter again to Rome. 4 Others, again, unwilling to forego their 
secular mode of existence, or to abandon the livelihood afforded by 
the church, were numerous and hardy enough to ask Pepin and Car- 
loman to set apart for them churches and monasteries in which they 
could live as they were accustomed to do. So nearly did they suc- 
ceed in this attempt, that Boniface found it necessary to appeal to 
Zachary to prevent so flagrant an infraction of the canons, and 
Zachary wrote to the princes with instructions as to the mode of 
answering the petition. 5 Others, still more audacious, assailed 



1 Capit. Caroloman. ann. 743 c. 1. 

2 Zachar. PP. Epist. 8, c. 11, 18. 

3 Pippini Capit. ann. 744 c. 4, 8, 9. 



4 Bonifac. Epistt. 135, 139 (Zachar. 
PP. Epist. 9). 

5 Othlon. Vit. S. Bonif. Lib. n. c. 11. 



RESISTANCE OF THE CLERGY. 133 

Boniface in every way, endeavored to weary him out, and even, 
rightly regarding him as the cause of their persecution and tribula- 
tions, made attempts upon his life. 1 

That he should have escaped, indeed, is surprising, when the char- 
acter of the age is considered, and the nature of the evils inflicted 
on those who must have regarded the reform as a wanton outrage on 
their rights. As late as 748, Boniface describes the false bishops 
and priests, sacrilegious and wandering hypocrites and adulterers, as 
much more numerous than those who as yet had been forced to com- 
pliance with the rules. Driven from the churches, but supported by 
the sympathizing people, they performed their ministry among the 
fields and in the cabins of the peasants, who concealed them from 
the ecclesiastical authorities. 2 This is not a description of mere 
sensual worldlings, and it is probable that by this time persecution 
had ranged the evil-disposed on the winning side. Those who thus 
exercised their ministry in secret and in wretchedness, retaining the 
veneration of the people, were therefore men who believed them- 
selves honorably and legitimately married, and who were incapable 
of sacrificing wife and children for worldly advantage or in blind 
obedience to a rule which to them was novel, unnatural, and inde- 
fensible. 

Boniface escaped from the vengeful efforts of those who suffered 
from his zeal, to fall, in 755, under the sword of the equally un- 
grateful Frisians. It is probable that up to the time of his death he 
was occupied with the reformation of the clergy in conjunction with 
his missionary labors, for in 752 we find him still engaged in the 
hopeless endeavor to eject the unclerical prelates, who even yet 
held over from the iron age of Charles Martel. His disappearance 
from the scene, however, made but little change in the movement 
which had owed so much to his zeal. 

In 747 Carloman's pious aspirations had led him from a throne to 
a cloister, and the monastery of Monte Casino welcomed its most 
illustrious inmate. Pepin received the whole vast kingdom, and his 
ambitious designs drew him daily closer to the church, the impor- 
tance of whose support he commenced to appreciate. His policy, 
in consolidating the power of his house and in founding a new 



1 Bonifacii Epist. 135.— S. Ludgeri Vit. S. Bonifacii. 

2 Bonifacii Epist. 140. 



134 THE OARLOVINGIANS. 

dynasty, led him necessarily to reorganize the anarchical elements 
of society. As an acknowledged monarch, a regularly constituted 
hierarchy and recognized subordination to the laws, both civil and 
ecclesiastical, were requisite to the success of his government and to 
the establishment of his race. Accordingly, we find him carrying 
out systematically the work commenced by Carloman and Boniface, 
to which at first his support had been rather negative than positive. 

Six weeks after the martyrdom of Boniface, Pepin held a synod 
in his royal palace of Verneuil, in which this tendency is very appar- 
ent. Full power was given to the bishops in their respective dioceses 
to enforce the canons of the church on the clergy, the monks, and 
the laity. The monasteries were especially intrusted to the episcopal 
care, and means were provided for reducing the refractory to sub- 
mission. The rule of Benedict was proclaimed as in force in all 
conventual establishments, and cloistered residence was strictly 
enjoined. All ecclesiastics were ordered to pay implicit obedience 
to their bishops, and this was secured by the power of excommuni- 
cation, which was no longer, as in earlier ages, the simple suspension 
from religious privileges, but was a ban which deprived the offender 
of all association with his fellows, and exposed him, if contumacious, 
to exile by the secular power. By the appointment of metropolitans, 
a tribunal of higher resort was instituted, while two synods to be 
held each year gave the opportunity both of legislation and of final 
judgment. Submission to their decisions was insured by threatening 
stripes to all who should appeal from them to the royal court. 1 

Such are the main features, as far as they relate to our subject, of 
this Capitulary, which so strikingly reveals the organizing system of 
the Carlovingian polity. Carried out by the rare intelligence and 
vigor of Charlemagne, it gave a precocious development of civiliza- 
tion to Europe, transitory because in advance of the age, and because 
it was based on the intellectual force of the ruler, and not on the virtue 
and cultivation of a people as yet too barbarous to appreciate it. 

The organization of the church, moreover, received at the same 
time an efficient impulse by the institution of the order of canons, 
founded virtually in 762, the year in which St. Chrodegang, Bishop 
of Metz, promulgated the Rule for their government. This Rule 
of course entirely forbids all intercourse with women, and endeavors 
to suppress it by punishing transgressors with stripes, incarceration, 



1 Capit. Pippini arm. 755. 



EFFECT OF THE REFORM 



135 



and deposition. 1 The lofty rank of St. Chrodegang, who was a cousin 
of Pepin-le-Bref, and the eminent piety which merited canonization, 
gave him wide influence which doubtless assisted in extending the 
new institution, but it also had recommendations of its own which 
were sufficient to insure its success. By converting the cathedral 
clergy into monks, bound by implicit obedience towards their supe- 
riors, it brought no little increase of power to the bishops, and 
enabled them to exert new authority and influence. It is no wonder 
therefore that the Order spread rapidly and was adopted in most of 
the dioceses. 



For a century we hear nothing more of sacerdotal marriage — and 
yet it may be doubted whether clerical morality had really been 
improved by the well-meant reforms of Boniface. These were fol- 
lowed up by Charlemagne with all his resistless energy, and the im- 
portance which he attached to the subject is shown by an epistle of 
Adrian I. denying certain assertions made to the Frankish sovereign, 
inculpating the purity of the Roman clergy. Adrian, in defending 
his flock, assumes that the object of the slanders can only have been 
to produce a quarrel between himself and Charlemagne, who must 
evidently have made strong representations on the subject to the 
Pontiff. 2 Under such pressure perhaps there was something less of 
shameless licentiousness ; the episcopal chairs were no longer defiled 
by the cynical lubricity of unworthy prelates ; but in the mass of 
the clergy the passions, deprived of all legitimate gratification, could 
not be restrained in a race so little accustomed to self-control, and 
unchastity remained a corroding ulcer which Charlemagne and Louis- 
le-Debonnaire vainly endeavored to eradicate. The former, indeed, 
we find asking in 811 whether the only difference between clerk and 
layman is that the former does not bear arms and is not publicly 
married ; 3 while Ghaerbald, Bishop of Liege, a few years before had 
ordered that all priests maintaining intercourse with their wives 
should be deprived of their benefices and be subjected to penitence 
until death. 4 



1 Kegul. S. Chrodegangi cap. 29, 56, 
68, 70. 

2 Cod. Carolini Epist. lxiv. (Patrcr 
log. T. 98 p. 319). Yet even in 772 
we find that a council in Bavaria found 
it necessary to prohibit the marriage 



of nuns. — Concil. Dingolving. can. 2 
(Hartzheim Concil. German. I. 129). 

3 Capit. Car. Mag. II. ann. 811 cap. 
iv. (Baluz. I. 329— Ed. Venet.). 

4 G-haerbaldi Judicia Sacerdotalia de 
Criminibus c. 13 (Martene Ampl. Coll. 
VII. 31). 



136 THE CARLOVINGIANS. 

It would be an unprofitable task to recapitulate the constantly 
repeated legislation prohibiting the residence of women with the 
clergy and repressing the disorders and irregularities of the monastic 
establishments. It would be but a reiteration of the story already 
related in previous centuries, and its only importance would be in 
showing by the frequency of the edicts how utterly ineffectual they 
were. When Louis-le-Debonnaire, in 826, decreed that the seduc- 
tion of a nun was to be punished by the death of both the partners 
in guilt ; that the property of both was to be confiscated to the 
church, and that the count in whose district the crime occurred, if 
he neglected its prosecution, was to be degraded, deprived of his 
office, undergo public penance, and pay his full wer-gild to the fisc, 
the frightful severity of the enactment is the measure of the impos- 
sibility of effecting its purpose, and of the inefficiency of the refor- 
mation which had been so elaborately prepared and so energetically 
promulgated by Louis in 817. 2 

But perhaps the most convincing evidence of the debased morality 
of the clergy, and of the low standard which even the most zealous 
prelates were forced to adopt, is to be found in a curious fabrication 
by the authors of the False Decretals. The collection of decretals 
which they put forth in the names of the early popes embodied their 
conception of a perfect church establishment, as adapted to the 
necessities and aspirations of the ninth century. While straining 
every point to throw off all subjection to the temporal power, and to 
obtain for the hierarchy full and absolute control over all ecclesias- 
tical matters and persons, they seem to have felt it necessary to relax 
in an important point the rigor of the canons respecting sacerdotal 
purity. Gregory the Great had proclaimed in the clearest and most 
definite manner the rule that a single lapse from virtue condemned 
the sinner to irrevocable degradation, and rendered him forever unfit 
for the ministry of the altar. 3 Yet " Isidor Mercator" added to a 
genuine epistle of Gregory a long passage elaborately arguing the 
necessity of forgiveness for those who expiate by repentance the sin 



1 Ludov. Pii. Capit. Ingelenheim. 
c. 5. 

2 Capit. Aquisgran. ann. 817. Cf. 
Mirsei Cod. Donat. Piar. c. 13.— This 
Capitulary regulating monastic life 
was generally adopted as a supple- 



ment to the rule of Benedict (Leo. 
Ostiens. Chron. Cassinens. Lib. i. c. 
16). 

3 See ante, p. 123. Cf. Pseudo-Hor- 
misdse Epist. Encyc. (Migne's Patrol 
T. LXIII. p. 527). 



INCREASING CORRUPTION. 



137 



of impurity, " of which, among many, so few are guiltless." 1 The 
direct testimony is notable, but not less so is the indirect evidence of 
the prevalent laxity which could induce such a bid for popularity on 
the part of high churchmen like those concerned in the Isidorian 
forgeries. 

Evidence, also, is not wanting, that the denial of the appropriate 
and healthful human affections led to the results which might be 
expected of fearful and unnatural crimes. That the inmates of 
monasteries, debarred from female society, occasionally abandoned 
themselves to the worst excesses, or, breaking through all restraint, 
indulged in less reprehensible but more open scandals, is proclaimed 
by Charlemagne, who threatened to vindicate the outrage upon 
religion with the severest punishment. 2 Nor were the female con- 
vents more successfully regulated, for the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
in 836, states that in many places they were rather brothels than 
houses of God ; and it shows how close a supervision over the spouses 
of Christ was thought requisite when it proceeds to direct that nun- 
neries shall be so built as to have no dark corners in which scandals 
may be perpetrated out of view. 3 The effect of these efforts may be 
estimated from a remark in a collection of laws which bears the 
name of Erchenbald, Chancellor of Charlemagne, but which is rather 
attributable to the close of the ninth century, that the licentiousness 
of nuns commonly resulted in a worse crime — infanticide ; 4 and, as 
this is extracted textually from an epistle of St. Boniface to Ethel- 
bald, King of Mercia, 5 it is presumable that the evil became notori- 
ous simultaneously with the reform under the early Carlovingians, 



1 Quid enim est gravius carnale de- 
lictum admittere sine quo in multis 
pauci inveniuntur, an Dei filium timen- 
do negare ? in quo uno ipsum beatum 
Petrum apostolorum principem, ad 
cujus nunc corpus indigni sedemus, 
lapsum esse cognoscimus, sed post ne- 
gationem pcenitentia secuta, et post 
poenitentiam misericordia data. — 
Pseudo-Gregor. Epist. ad Secundi- 
num. 

Isidor Mercator also includes two 
canons from the sixth century forgery 
of the Koman Council said to have been 
held under Silvester I. (see p. 122). 
Of these, one prohibits bishops from 
celebrating the marriage of nuns under 
seventy years of age ; the other forbids 
priests from marrying, under a penalty 



of ten year's suspension, with a threat of 
perpetual deprivation for contumacy. 
(Constit. Pseudo-Silvestri cap. x. xix.) 
The adoption of these in the False 
Decretals would seem at least to be 
superfluous. 

2 Capit. Carol. Mag. I. ann. 802 c. 17. 

3 Concil. Aquisgran. ann. 836, de vit. 
et doc. infer, ordin. can. xii., xiv. — De 
monasteriis puellarum quae in quibus- 
dam locis lupanaria potius videntur esse 
quam monasteria. 

4 Capitul. add. iv. cap. clx. (Baluze, 
I. 1227). 

5 Bonifacii Epist. 19. 



138 



THE CARLOVING-IANS. 



and continued unabated throughout their dynasty. One device to 
subjugate nature, adopted in the monasteries, was to let blood at 
stated intervals, in the hope of reducing the system and thus miti- 
gating the effects of prolonged continence — a device prohibited by 
Louis-le-Debonnaire, but long subsequently maintained as part of 
monastic discipline. 1 As regards the secular clergy, even darker 
horrors are asserted by Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, and other pre- 
lates, who forbade to their clergy the residence of mother, aunt, and 
sister, in consequence of the crimes so frequently perpetrated with 
them at the instigation of the devil ; 2 and the truth of this hideous 
fact is unfortunately confirmed by the declarations of councils held 
at various periods. 3 

If, under the external polish of Carlovingian civilization, such 
utter demoralization existed, while the laws were enforced by the 
stern vigor of Charlemagne, or the sensitive piety of Louis-le- 
Debonnaire, it is easy to understand what was the condition of 



1 Capit. Aquisgran. ann. 817, c. xi. — 
Chavard, Celibat des Pretres, Geneve, 
1874, p. 35. 

2 Quia, instigante diabolo, etiam in 
illis scelus frequenter perpetratum in- 
venitur, aut etiam in pedissequis 
earum. Nee igitur matrem, neque 
amitam, neque sororem permittimus 
ultra habitare in domo una cum sa- 
cerdote. — Theodulf. Aurelian. Capit. 
Secund. (Baluz. et Mansi II. 99.) 

He had previously (Epist. c. 12) 
promulgated the prohibition, assign- 
ing for it the more decent reason, 
in imitation of St. Augustin, of the 
danger arising from female attendants. 
In this he was imitated, about 850, by 
Eodolf of Bourges (Capit. Kodulf. 
Bituricens. c. 16), and about 871 by 
Walter of Orleans (Capit. Walteri 
Aurelian. c. 3). 

In 889, however, Eiculfus of Sois- 
sons declares the lamentable truth 
without reserve: " ISTos vero etiam a 
matribus, amitis, sororibus vel pro- 
pinquis cavendum dicimus, ne forte 
illu d eveniat quod in sancta scriptura 
legitur de Thamar sorore Absalon . . . 
de Loth etiam . . . Quod si aliquis 
vestrum matrem, sororem vel amitam 
ad convescendum vocaverit, expleto 
convivio ad domos suas vel ad hospitia 
a domo presbyteri remota, cum luce 
diei eas faciat remeare ; periculosum 



quippe est ut vobiscum habitent." — 
Kiculfi Suess. Const, c. 14. 

3 Thus the council of Mainz in 888 
— "Quod multum dolendum est, ssepe 
audivimus per illam concessionem plu- 
rima scelera esse commissa, ita ut qui- 
dam sacerdotum, cum propriis sororibus 
concumbentes, filios ex eis generassent, 
et idcirco constituit haec sancta sy nodus, 
ut nullus presbyter ullam feminam se- 
cum in domo propria permittat qua- 
tenus occasio malae suspicionis vel 
facti iniqui penitus auferatur" (Con- 
cil. Mogunt. ann. 888 c. 10). In the 
same year the third canon of the 
council of Metz repeats the prohibi- 
tion ; while in 895 the council of 
Nantes declares — " Sed neque illas 
quas canones concedunt ; quia insti- 
gante diabolo, etiam in illis scelus fre- 
quenter perpetratum reperitur, aut 
etiam in pedissequis illarum, scilicet 
matrem, amitam, sororem." — Concil. 
Namnetens. ann. 895 c. 3. 

It is true that some authorities, 
including the great name of Pagi, at- 
tribute to this council of Nantes the 
date of 660, but this is unimportant 
as regards the canon in question, for 
its necessity during the period under 
consideration is shown by its inser- 
tion in the Capitularies of Benedict 
the Levite (Lib. vn. c. 376), and in 
the collection of Eegino of Pruhm 
(Lib. i. c. 104). 



CAUSES OF DEMORALIZATION. 139 

society when the sons of the latter involved the whole empire in a 
ceaseless tumult of civil war. Not only was the watchful care of 
the first two emperors withdrawn, but the state was turned against 
itself, and rapine and desolation became almost universal. The 
royal power was parcelled out, by the rising feudal system, among a 
crowd of nobles whose energies were solely directed to consolidating 
their position, and was chiefly employed, as far as it affected the 
church, in granting abbeys and other ecclesiastical dignities to worth- 
less laymen, whose support could only be secured by bribes which 
the royal fisc could no longer supply. Pagan Danes and infidel 
Saracens were ravaging the fairest provinces of the empire, and their 
blows fell with peculiar weight on the representatives of a hated 
religion. For seventy years previous to the treaty of Clair-sur-Epte 
no mass resounded in the walls of the cathedral church of Coutances, 
so fierce and unremitting had been the incursions of the Northmen. 
It is therefore no wonder that, as early as 845, the bishops assembled 
at the council of Yernon confess that their ecclesiastical authority is 
no longer sufficient to prevent the marriage of monks and nuns and 
to suppress the crowds who escaped from their convents and wan- 
dered over the country in licentiousness and vagabondage. To 
restrain these disorders they are obliged to invoke the royal power 
to cast into prison these reprobates and force them to undergo 
canonical penance. 1 

During this period of anarchy and lawlessness, the church was 
skilfully emancipating itself from subjection to the temporal power, 
and was laying the foundation of that supremacy which was eventu- 
ally to dominate Christendom. While its aspirations and ambitions 
were thus worldly, and its ranks were recruited from a generation 
trained under such influences, it is easy to believe that the disorders 
which Charlemagne himself could not repress, grew more and more 
flagrant. Even the greatly augmented poAver of the papacy added 
to the increasing license, although Nicholas I. in 861 had ordered 
the deposition and degradation of all priests convicted of immorality, 2 
for the appellate jurisdiction claimed by Rome gave practical immu- 
nity to those against whom the enforcement of the canons was 
attempted. About the year 876, Charles-le-Chauve, in a spirited 
argument against the pretensions of the popes, calls attention specially 



1 Capit. Carol. Calvi Tit hi. cap. 4, 5. 

2 Martene Ampliss. Collect. I. 151. 



140 THE CARLOVINGIANS. 

to the exemption thus afforded to unchaste priests, who, after due 
conviction by their bishops, obtained letters from Rome overruling 
the judgments ; the distance and dangers of the journey precluding 
the local authorities from supporting their verdicts by sending com- 
missioners and witnesses to carry on a second trial beyond the Alps. 1 
This shows that the effort to enforce purity was not as yet aban- 
doned, however slender may have been the success in eradicating an 
evil so general and so deeply rooted. The nominal punishment for 
unchastity — loss of benefice and deposition — was severe enough to 
induce the guilty to hide their excesses with care, when they chanced 
to have a bishop who was zealous in the performance of his duties. 
Efforts at concealment, moreover, were favored by the forms of 
iudicial procedure, which were such as to throw every difficulty in 
the way of procuring a conviction, and to afford, in most cases, 
practical immunity for sin, unless committed in the most open and 
shameless manner. Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, the leading 
ecclesiastic of his day, whose reputation for learning and piety would 
have rendered him one of the lights of the church, had not his con- 
sistent opposition to the innovations of the papacy caused his sanc- 
tity to be questioned in Rome, has left us elaborate directions as to 
the forms of prosecution in such matters. Notwithstanding his 
earnest exhortations and arguments in favor of the most ascetic 
purity, he discourages investigation by means of neighbors and 
parishioners, or irreverent inquiries on the subject. Only such 
testimony was admissible as the laws allowed, and the laws were 
very strict as to the position and character of witnesses. In addi- 
tion to the accusers themselves, seven witnesses were necessary. Of 
these, one was required to substantiate the oaths of the rest by under- 
going the ordeal, thus exposing himself and all his fellows to the 
heavy penalties visited on perjury, upon the chance of the red-hot 
iron or cold-water trial, administered, perhaps, by those interested 
in shielding the guilty. If, as we can readily believe was generally 
the case, these formidable difficulties could not be overcome, and the 
necessary number of witnesses were not ready to sacrifice themselves, 
then the accused could purge himself of the sins imputed to him by 
his own oath, supported by one, three, or six compurgators of his 
own order ; and Hincmar himself bears testimony to the associations 
which were formed among the clergy to swear each other through all 

1 Hincmari Epist. xxxn. c. 20. 



INDIFFERENCE TO THE CANONS. 



141 



troubles. 1 Even simpler, indeed, was the process prescribed not 
long before by Pope Nicholas I., who ordered that when legal evi- 
dence was not procurable, the accused priest could clear himself on 
his own unsupported oath. 2 

Under these regulations, Hincmar orders an annual investigation 
to be made throughout his province, but the results would appear to 
have been as unsatisfactory as might have been expected. In 874, 
at the Synod of Rheims, he complains that his orders have been 
neglected and despised, and he warns his clergy that proof of actual 
criminality will not be required, but that undue familiarity with 
women, if persisted in, will be sufficient for condemnation when 
properly proved. 3 

In the presence of facilities for escape such as were afforded by 
the practice of ecclesiastical law as constructed by the decretalists, 
and as expounded by Hincmar himself, the threats in which he 
indulged could carry but little terror. We need not wonder, there- 
fore, if we meet with but slender indications of priestly marriage 
during all this disorder, for there was evidently little danger of 
punishment for the unchaste priest who exercised ordinary discretion 
in his amours, while the penalties impending over those who should 
openly brave the canonical rules were heavy, and could hardly be 
avoided by any one who should dare to unite himself publicly to a 
woman in marriage. Every consideration of worldly prudence and 
passion therefore induced the priest to pursue a course of illicit 
licentiousness — and yet, as the century wore on, traces of entire 
neglect or utter contempt of the canons began to manifest them- 
selves. How little the rule really was respected by the ecclesiastical 
authorities, when anything was to be gained by its suppression, is 
shown in the decision made by Nicholas I., the highest of high 
churchmen, when encouraging the Bulgarians to abandon the Greek 
church, although the separation between Rome and Constantinople 
was not, as yet, formal and complete. To their inquiry whether 



1 Hincmari Capit. Presbyteris data, 
cap. xxi.-xxv. 

Hincmar repeats his instructions, 
with some amplifications, in another 
document, in which he declares them 
to be the received traditional rules — 
"a majoribus nostris accepimus" (De 
Presbyt. criminos. c. xi.-xvm.). That 
they were generally practised is shown 
in their almost literal repetition by 



the council of Trosley in 909 — with 
the exception that in some cases four- 
teen or twenty-one witnesses were re- 
quired for conviction (Concil. Tros- 
lei. c. ix.). 

2 Martene Ampl. Collect. I. 151. 

3 Capit. Synod. Eemens. ann. 874 
c. 3. 



142 



THE CARLO VINGIAJNS. 



married priests should be ejected, lie replied that though such min- 
isters were objectionable, yet the mercy of God was to be imitated, 
who causes his sun to shine on good and evil alike, and as Christ 
did not dismiss Judas, so they were not to be dismissed. Besides, 
laymen were not to judge priests for any crime, nor to make any 
investigation into their lives, such inquiries being reserved for bishops. 1 
As no bishops had yet been appointed by Rome, the answer was a 
skilfully tacit permission of priestly marriage, while avoiding an 
open avowal. 

It need awaken no surprise if those who united recklessness and 
power should openly trample on the canons thus feebly supported. 
A somewhat prominent personage of the period was Hubert, brother 
of Teutberga, Queen of Lotharingia, and his turbulent conduct was 
a favorite theme for animadversion by the quiet monastic chroniclers. 
That he was an abbot is perhaps no proof of his clerical profession, 
but when we find his wife and children alluded to as a proof of his 
abandoned character, it shows that he was bound by vows or ordained 
within the prohibited grades, and that he publicly violated the rules 
and defied their enforcement. 2 

The earliest absolute evidence that has reached us, however, of 
marriage committed by a member of the great body of the plebian 
clergy, subsequent to the reforms of Boniface, occurs about the year 
893. Angelric priest of Vasnau appealed to the synod of Chalons, 
stating that he had been publicly joined in wedlock to a woman 
named Grimma. Such an attempt by a priest, the consent of the 
woman and her relatives, and the performance of the ceremony by 
another priest all show the prevailing laxity and ignorance, yet still 
there were found some faithful and pious souls to object to the trans- 
action, and Angelric was not allowed to enjoy undisturbed the fruits 
of his sin. Yet even the synod was perplexed, and unable to decide 
what ought to be done. It therefore only temporarily suspended 
Angelric from communion, while Mancio, his bishop, applied for 
advice to Foulques of Rheims, metropolitan of the province, and the 
ignorance and good faith of all parties are manifested by the fact 
that Angelric himself was sent to Foulques as the bearer of the letter 
of inquiry. 3 



1 Nicholai I. Kespons. ad Consult. 
Bulgar. c. 70. 

2 Efiicitur ad hsec uxorius, liberos 
procreans, et ad suae damnationis cu- 
mulum nil sibi clericale prseter ton- 



surans prseferens. — Folcuin. de Gest. 
Abbat. Laubiens. c. 12. 

3 Mantion. Episc. Catalaun. Epist. 
ad Pule. Remens. (Migne's Patrol. T. 
131, p. 23.) 



DECLINE OF CIVILIZATION. 143 

With the ninth century the power, the cultivation, and the civili- 
zation of the Carlovingians may be considered virtually to disappear, 
though for nearly a hundred years longer a spectral crown encircled 
the brows of the ill-starred descendants of Pepin. Centralization, 
rendered impossible in temporal affairs by feudalism, was transferred 
to the church, which, thenceforth, more than ever independent of 
secular control, became wholly responsible for its own shortcomings ; 
and the records of the period make only too plainly manifest how 
utterly the power, so strenuously contended for, failed to overcome 
the ignorance and the barbarism of the age. 



X. 
THE TENTH CENTURY. 



The tenth century, well characterised by Cave as the " Sseculum 
Obscurum," is perhaps the most repulsive in Christian annals. The 
last vestiges of Roman culture have disappeared, while the dawn of 
modern civilization is as yet far off. Society, in a state of transition, 
is painfully and vainly seeking some form of security and stability. 
The marauding wars of petty neighboring chiefs become the normal 
condition, only interrupted when two or three unite to carry destruc- 
tion to some more powerful rival. Though the settlement of Nor- 
mandy relieved Continental Europe to a great extent from the terror 
of the Dane, yet the still more dreaded Hun took his place and 
ravaged the nations from the Danube to the Atlantic, while England 
bore the undivided fury of the Vikings, and the Saracen left little to 
glean upon the shores of the Mediterranean. 

When brutal ignorance and savage ferocity were the distinguishing 
characteristics of the age, the church could scarce expect to escape 
from the general debasement. It is rather a matter of grateful sur- 
prise that religion itself was not overwhelmed in the general chaos 
which engulfed almost all previously existing institutions. When 
the crown of St. Peter became the sport of barbarous nobles, or of a 
still more barbarous populace, we may grieve, but we cannot affect 
astonishment at the unconcealed dissoluteness of Sergius III., whose 
bastard, twenty years later, was placed in the pontifical chair by the 
influence of that embodiment of all possible vices, his mother Ma- 
rozia. 1 The last extreme of depravity would seem attained by John 
XII., but as his deposition in 963 by Otho the Great loosened the 
tongues of his accusers, it is possible that he was no worse than some 
of his predecessors. No extreme of wickedness was beyond his 
capacity ; the sacred palace of the Lateran was turned into a brothel ; 

1 Liutprand. Antapod. Lib. in. c. 43. 



TENDENCY TO HEEEDITARY BENEFICES. 145 

incest gave a flavor to crime when simple profligacy palled upon his 
exhausted senses, and the honest citizens of Rome complained that 
the female pilgrims who formerly crowded the holy fanes were 
deterred from coming through fear of his promiscuous and unbridled 
lust. 1 

With such corruption at the head of the church, it is lamentably 
ludicrous to see the popes inculcating lessons of purity, and urging 
the maintenance of canons which they set the example of disregard- 
ing so utterly. The clergy were now beginning to arrogate to them- 
selves the privilege of matrimony; and marriage, so powerful a 
corrective of indiscriminate vice, was regarded with peculiar detesta- 
tion by the ecclesiastical authorities, and awoke a far more energetic 
opposition than the more dangerous and corrupting forms of illicit 
indulgence. The pastor who intrigued in secret with his penitents 
and parishioners was scattering the seeds of death in place of the 
bread of life, and was abusing his holy trust to destroy the souls 
confided to his charge, but this worked no damage to the temporal 
interests of the church at large. The priest who, in honest ignorance 
of the canons, took to himself a wife, and endeavored faithfully to 
perform the duties of his humble sphere, could scarcely avoid seeking 
the comfort and worldly welfare of his offspring, and this exposed 
the common property of all to dilapidation and embezzlement. Dis- 
interested virtue perhaps would not be long in making a selection 
between the comparative evils, but disinterested virtue was not a 
distinguishing characteristic of the age. 

Yet a motive of even greater importance than this rendered 
matrimony more objectionable than concubinage or licentiousness. 
By the overruling tendency of the age, all possessions previously 
held by laymen on precarious tenure were rapidly becoming heredi- 
tary. As the royal power slipped from hands unable to retain it, 
offices, dignities, and lands became the property of the holders, and 
were transmitted from father to son. Had marriage been openly 
permitted to ecclesiastics, their functions and benefices would un- 
doubtedly have followed the example. An hereditary caste would 
have been established, who would have held their churches and lands 
of right; independent of the central authority, all unity would have 
been destroyed, and the collective power of the church would have 
disappeared. Having nothing to gain from obedience, submission to 



1 Liutprand. Hist. Otton. c. 4, 10. — Chron. Benedict. S. Andreas Monach. c. 35. 

10 



146 THE TENTH CENTURY. 

control would have become the exception, and, laymen in all but 
name, the ecclesiastics would have had no incentive to perform their 
functions, except what little influence, under such circumstances, 
might have been retained over the people by maintaining the sacred 
character thus rendered a mockery. 

In an age when everything was unsettled, yet with tendencies so 
strongly marked, it thus became a matter of vital importance to the 
church to prevent anything like hereditary occupation of benefices 
or private appropriation of property, and against these abuses its 
strongest efforts were directed. The struggle lasted for centuries, 
and it is indeed most fortunate for our civilization that sacerdotalism 
triumphed, even at the expense of what at the moment may appear 
of greater importance. I cannot here pause to trace the progress of 
the contest in its long and various vicissitudes. It will be found 
constantly reappearing in the course of the following pages, and for 
the present it will suffice to group together a few evidences to show 
how rapidly the hereditary tendency developed itself in the period 
under consideration. 

The narrowness of the escape from ecclesiastical feudalization is 
well illustrated by an incident at the council of Tours, in 925, where 
two priests, father and son, Ranald and Raymond, appeared as com- 
plainants, claiming certain tithes detained from them by another 
priest. They gained the suit, and the tithes were confirmed to them 
and their successors forever. 1 Even more suggestive is the com- 
plaint, some thirty years later, of Ratherius, Bishop of Verona, who 
objects strenuously to the ordination of the children sprung from 
these illegal marriages, as each successive father made his son a 
priest, thus perpetuating the scandal indefinitely throughout the 
church; and as he sorrowfully admits that his clergy could not be 
restrained from marriage, he begs them at least to bring their children 
up as laymen. 2 This, however, by his own showing, would not re- 
move the material evil, for in another treatise he states that his 
priests and deacons divided the church property between them, that 
they might have lands and vineyards wherewith to provide marriage 
portions for their sons and daughters. 3 This system of appropriation 
also forms the subject of lamentation for Atto, Bishop of Vercelli, 

1 Concil. Turon. ann. 925. (Martene Thesaur. IV. 73.) 

2 Eatherii de nuptu cujusdam illicito c. 4. 

3 Eatherii de contemptu canon. P. i. c. 4. 



DILAPIDATION OF CHUECH PROPERTY 



147 



whose clergy insisted on publicly keeping concubines — as he stigma- 
tizes those who evidently were wives — to whom they left by will 
everything that they could gather from the possessions of the church, 
from the alms of the pious, or from any other source, to the ruin of 
ecclesiastical property and to the deprivation of the poor. 1 How 
well founded were these complaints is evident from a document of 
the eleventh century concerning the churches of St. Stephen and 
St. Donatus in Aretino. The priests in charge appropriated to 
themselves all the possessions of the churches, including the reve- 
nues of the altars, the oblations, and the confessional. These they 
portioned out among each other and handed down from father to 
son as regularly as any other property, selling and exchanging their 
shares as the interest of the moment might suggest, and the successive 
transmission of each fragment of property is detailed with all the 
precision of a brief of title. The natural result was that for gener- 
ations the religious services of Aretino were utterly disregarded. 
Sometimes the priestly owners would hire some one to ring the bells, 
light the candles, and minister to the altar, but in the multitude of 
ownerships the stipends were irregularly paid, and the officiator 
refused continually to serve, candles were not furnished, bell-ropes 
were not renewed, and even the leathers which attached the clappers 
to the bells were neglected. The church of St. Stephen was the 
cathedral of Aretino, yet the bishops were powerless to correct these 
abuses. The marriages of their priests they do not seem to have 
even attempted to repress, and were quite satisfied if they could 
occasionally get a portion of the revenues devoted to the offices of 
religion. 2 The same condition of affairs existed among the Anglo- 
Saxons. "It is all the worse when they have it all, for they do not 
dispose, of it as they ought, but decorate their wives with what they 
should the altars, and turn everything to their own worldly pomp. . . 
Let those who before this had the evil custom of decorating their 
women as they should the altars, refrain from this evil custom, and 
decorate their churches, as they best can; then would they command 
for themselves both divine counsel and worldly worship. A priest's 
wife is nothing but a snare of the devil, and he who is ensnared 
thereby on to his end, he will be seized fast by the devil." 3 



1 Atton. Vercell. Epist. ix. 

2 Enarratio eorum quae perverse gesta 
sunt, etc. (Muratori, Antiq. Med. JEvi 
Diss. lxii.). 



3 Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ec- 
clesiastical, c. 19, 23 (Thorpe, Ancient 
Laws, &c. of England, II. 329, 337). 



148 THE TENTH CENTURY. 

It will be observed that, as the century advanced, sacerdotal mar- 
riage became more and more common. Indeed, in 966, Katherius 
not only intimates that his clergy all were married, but declares that 
if the canon prohibiting repeated marriages were put in force, only 
boys would be left in the church, while even they would be ejected 
under the rule which rendered ineligible the offspring of illicit unions ; * 
and, in spite of his earnest asceticism, he only ventures to prohibit 
his clergy from conjugal intercourse during the periods likewise for- 
bidden to laymen, such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, etc. 2 It was 
not that the ancient canons were forgotten, 3 nor that strenuous efforts 
were not made to enforce them, but that the temper of the times 
created a spirit of personal independence so complete that the power 
of the ecclesiastical authorities seemed utterly inadequate to control 
the growing license. About the year 938, Gerard, Archbishop of 
Lorsch and Papal Legate for Southern Germany, laid before Leo 
VII. a series of questions relating to various points in which the 
ancient canons were set at naught throughout the region under his 
supervision. Leo answered by a decretal addressed to all the princes 
and potentates of Europe, in which he laments over Gerard's state- 
ment of the public marriages of priests, and replies to his inquiry as 
to the capacity of their children for ecclesiastical promotion. The 
first he pronounces forbidden by the canons, and those guilty of it 
he orders to be deprived of their benefices. As for the offspring of 
such marriages, however, he says that they are not involved in the 
sins of their parents. 4 

The unusual liberality of this latter declaration, however, was not 
a precedent. The church always endeavored to prevent the ordina- 
tion of the children of ecclesiastics, and Leo, in permitting it, was 
only yielding to a pressure which he could not withstand. It was a 
most dangerous concession, for it led directly to the establishment of 
the hereditary principle. An effort was soon after made, by an 
appeal to the temporal power, to recover the ground lost, and about 
the year 940 Otho the Great was induced to issue an edict prohibit- 
ing the sons of deacons, priests, and bishops from occupying the 



1 Batherii Itinerar. c. 5. I parison. "Non enim una eademque 

j res bona, licet aeque omnibus conceditur. 

2 Eatberii Synodica c. 15. Siquidem nuptise, laicis concessae, sacris 

, _. ,, ~ . , . ordinibus denegantur. " — Gunzonis 

3 Gunzo the Grammarian m his E ^ &d A ieni f es> 

learned treatise, makes use of the recog- * & 

nized celibacy of the clergy as a com- I 4 Leon. PP. VII. Epist. 15. 



PREVALENCE OF SACERDOTAL MARRIAGE. 



149 



positions of notary, judge, or count 1 — the bare necessity of which 
shows how numerous and powerful the class had already become. 

Although, as early as 925, the council of Spalatro seemed to find 
nothing to condemn in a single marriage, but threatened excommuni- 
cation against those who so far forgot themselves as to contract a 
second, 2 and though by the middle of the century the practice had 
become generally established, yet some rigid prelates continued to 
keep alive the memory of the ancient canons by fruitless protests 
and ineffectual efforts at reform. In 948, the synod of Engelheim, 
under the presidency of Marino, Bishop of Ostia and Papal Vicar, 
condemned such marriages as incestuous and unlawful. 3 In 952, at 
the council of Augsburg, the assembled German and Italian prelates 
made a further and more desperate effort. Deposition was pro- 
nounced against the subdeacon, deacon, priest, or bishop who should 
take to himself a wife; separation of those already married was 
ordered, and even the lower grades of the clergy, who had not pre- 
viously been subjected to any such rule, were commanded to observe 
the strictest continence. An attempt was also made to prevent con- 
cubinage by visiting suspected women with stripes and shaving; but 
there evidently was some difficulty anticipated in enforcing this, for 
the royal power is invoked to prevent secular interference with the 
sentence. 4 

This stringent legislation of course proved utterly nugatory, but, 
futile as it was, it yet awakened considerable opposition. St. Ulric, 
in whose episcopal town of Augsburg the council was held, addressed 
a long epistle to the Pope, remonstrating against his efforts to enforce 
the rule of celibacy, and arguing the question, temperately but 
forcibly, on the grounds both of scriptural authority and of expediency. 
He pointed out how much more obnoxious to Divine wrath were the 
promiscuous and nameless crimes indulged in by those who were 
foremost in advocating the reform, than the chaste and single mar- 



1 Constit. Otton. ann. 940, c. 12. 

2 Quod si sacerdotes incontinenter 
propter ipsam continentiam primam 
quam sortitus est, separati a consortio 
cellae, teneat uxorem ; si vere aliam 
duxerit, excommunicetur. — Concil. 
Spalatens. ann. 925 c. 15. 

The passage is evidently corrupt, but 
its intention is manifest. The reading 
suggested by Batthyani may be reason- 
ably accepted. ' ' Quod si sacerdotes in- 
continentes propter ipsam continentiam 



quam quis primam sortitus est, separati 
a consortio cellse, teneant uxorem, toler- 
antur; si vero aliam duxerint, excom- 
municentur. ' ' (Batthyani Legg. Eccles. 
Hungar. I. 333-4.) 

3 Eicheri Hist. Lib. n. c. 81. The 
canons of the council, however, as they 
have reached us, are silent on the sub- 
ject. 



4 Concil. Augustan, ann. 952 c. 
4,11. 



1, 



150 



THE TENTH CENTURY. 



riages of the clergy ; and the violent distortion of the sacred texts, 
by those who sought authority to justify the canon, he not unhappily 
characterized as straining the breast of Scripture until it yielded 
blood in place of milk. 1 

Despite the inefficiency of these attempts, the clergy were not 
always allowed to enjoy their unlawful domestic ties in peace, and, 
where the votaries of asceticism were bold and determined, the con- 
test was sometimes severe. The nature of the struggle is well illus- 
trated by the troubles which arose between Ratherius of Verona and 
the ecclesiastics of his diocese. In April, 967, John XIII. held a 
council at Ravenna which commanded those who were in holy orders 
to give up at once either their wives or their ministry, and Otho the 
Great was induced to issue a precept confirming this peremptory 
decree. Ratherius had long been vainly wishing for some authority 
on the subject more potent than the ancient and now obsolete canons, 
and on his return from Ravenna he summoned a synod for the pur- 
pose of promulgating the new regulations. His clergy got wind of 
his intention ; very few of them obeyed the summons, and most of 
those who came boldly declared that they would neither be separated 
from their wives nor abandon their functions ; in fact, they did not 
scruple to maintain that marriage was not only permissible, but even 
necessary to protect the church from the most hideous vices. The 
utmost concession he could obtain, indeed, came from a few who 
endeavored to excuse themselves on the ground of poverty, which 
did not enable them to live without the assistance of their wives, and 
who professed to be willing to separate from them if they could be 
assured of a regular stipend. 2 Ratherius had passed through too 
many vicissitudes in his long and agitated career to shrink from the 



1 Cod. Bamberg. Lib. II. Epist. 10. 

St. Ulric is noteworthy as the first 
subject of papal canonization, having 
been enrolled in the calendar by the 
council of Eome in 993. That priestly 
marriage should be advocated by so 
pious and venerable a father was of 
course not agreeable to the sacerdotal 
party, and his evidence against celi- 
bacy has not infrequently been ruled 
out of court by discrediting the au- 
thenticity of the epistle. The compiler 
of the collection containing it, made 
in 1125, prefixed the name of Nicholas 
as that of the pope to whom it was 
addressed, and as St. Ulric was about 
equidistant between Nicholas I. in the 



ninth and Nicholas II. in the eleventh 
century, it has been suggested that the 
epistle was addressed to the latter, on 
the occasion of his reforms in 1059, 
the use of St. Ulric 's name being as- 
sumed as a mistake of the compiler. 
That this is not so is shown by the 
fact that already in 1079 it was known 
as St. Ulric's, being condemned as 
such in that year by Gregory VII. — 
' ' scriptum quod dicitur sancti Oudal- 
rici ad papam Nicholaum, de nuptiis 
presbiterorum" (Bernald. Constant. 
Chron. ann. 1079). The authenticity 
of the document, I believe, is generally 
admitted by unprejudiced critics. 

2 Eatherii Discordia c. 1, 6. 



RESISTANCE OF THE CLERGY 



151 



collision, now that he was backed by both the papal and imperial 
authority. He promptly threw the recalcitrant pastors into prison, 
declaring that they should lie there until they paid a heavy fine for 
the benefit of the cathedral of the Virgin, and he further commanded 
the presence of those who had failed to appear. The clergy of the 
diocese, finding that the resistance of inertia was unavailing, took 
more decided steps, and appealed for protection to the temporal 
power, in the person of Nanno, Count of Verona. He promptly 
espoused their cause, and his missus Gilbert forbade their obedience 
to the summons of their bishop for a year. Ratherius remonstrated 
vehemently against the assumption of Nanno that the priests were 
his vassals, subject to his jurisdiction, and entitled to protection, and 
he lost no time in invoking the power of Otho, in a letter to Am- 
brose, the Imperial Chancellor. 1 The clergy were too powerful ; 
the imperial court decided against the bishop, and before the end of 
the year Ratherius was forced to retire from the unequal contest and 
to take refuge in the peaceful abbey of Lobbes, whence he had been 
withdrawn a quarter of a century before to fill the see of Verona. 
Three times had he thus been driven from that city, and an inter- 
mediate episcopate of Liege, with which one of his periods of exile 
was gratified, had been terminated in the same abrupt manner by the 
unruly clergy, unable to endure the severity of his virtue. 2 How 
great was the revolution, to the unavailing repression of which he 
sacrificed his life, is shown by his declaration, two years before, that 
ecclesiastics differed from laymen only in shaving and the tonsure, 
in some slight fashioning of their garments, and in the careless 
performance of the church ritual. The progress of sacerdotal mar- 
riage during the preceding quarter of a century is shown by a similar 
comparison drawn by Ratherius some thirty years before, in which 
matrimony is included among the few points of difference, along with 
shaving and the tonsure. 3 



1 Katherii Epist. xi. , xn. — His letter 
to the Empress Adelaide, announcing 
his willingness to retire from the con- 
test, and to seek the congenial shades 
of a monastery, is most uncourtly. 
(Epist. xiii.) 

2 Kuotgeri Vit. S. Brunonis c. 38.— 
Katherius consoled himself epigram- 
matically by condensing his misfor- 
tunes in the Leonine verse — " Veronse 
prcesul, sed ter Katherius exsul." 



3 De Contempt. Canon. P. II. c. 2. — 
Prgeloquiorum Lib. v. c. 18. 

The existing confusion is well ex- 
emplified by another remark — " Exper- 
tus sum talem qui ante ordinationem 
adulterium perpetravit, postea quasi 
continenter vixit; alterum qui post 
ordinationem uxorem duxit ; et iste 
ilium, ille istum carpebat." — De Con- 
tempt. Canon. P. I. c. 11. 



152 



THE TENTH CENTURY. 



That the Veronese clergy were not alone in obtaining from the 
secular potentates protection against these efforts on the part of 
reforming bishops, is evident from the lamentations of Atto of Ver- 
celli. That estimable prelate deplores the blindness of those who, 
when paternally warned to mend their evil ways, refuse submission, 
and seek protection from the nobles. If we may believe him, how- 
ever, they gained but little by this course, for their criminal lives 
placed them at the mercy of the secular officials, whose threats to 
seize their wives and children could only be averted by continual 
presents. Thus they not only plundered the property of their 
churches, but forfeited the respect and esteem of their flocks ; all 
reverence for them was thereby destroyed, and, living in perpetual 
dread of the punishment due to their excesses, in place of com- 
manding obedience, they were exposed to constant oppression and 
petty tyranny. 1 

When prelates so sincere and so earnest as Ratherius and Atto 
were able to accomplish so little, it is easy to understand what must 
have been the condition of the dioceses intrusted to the great mass 
of bishops, who were rather feudal nobles than Christian prelates. 
St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon might issue thousands of exhortations to 
his clergy, inculcating chastity as the one indispensable virtue, and 
might laboriously reform his monasteries in which monks and nuns 
led a life almost openly secular ; 2 but he was well-nigh powerless for 
good compared with the potentiality of evil conveyed by the example 
of such a bishop as Segenfrid of Le Mans, who, during an episcopate 
which lasted for thirty-three years, took to himself a wife named 
Hildeberga, and who stripped the church for the benefit of his son 
Alberic, the sole survivor of a numerous progeny by her whom he 
caused to be reverenced as his JEpiscopissa; 3 or of Archembald, 



1 Atton. Vercell. Epist. 9. In an- 
other epistle (No. 10) Atto congratu- 
lates himself on the reform of some 
of his clergy, and threatens the contu- 
macious with degradation. 

2 Othloni Yit. S. Wolfkangi c. 15, 
16, 17, 23. 

3 "Ad cumulum damnationis suae, 
accepit mulierem, nomine Hildebur- 
gam, in senectute, quae, ingresso illo ad 
se, concepit et peperit filios et filias, 
&c." The chronicler makes the end of 
this aged sinner an example of poetical 



justice such as may frequently be found 
in the monkish annals of those times — 
" Qui dum esset flebotomatus, nocte 
insecuta dormivit cum Episcopissa; 
qua de re vulnus ccepit intumescere, et 
dolor usque ad interiora cordis deve- 
nire." Finding his end approaching, 
he assumed the monastic habit and took 
the vows, after which he immediately 
expired. — Act. Pontif. Cenoman. c. 29 
(Dom Bouquet, X. 384-5). 

Fulbert of Chartros has left us a 
lively sketch of the military bishops 
of the period. — " Tyrannos potius ap- 



CONTRASTS. 



153 



Archbishop of Sens, who, taking a fancy to the Abbey of St. Peter, 
drove out the monks and established a harem of concubines in the 
refectory, and installed his hounds and hawks in the cloister. 1 
Guarino of Modena might hope to stem the tide of license by 
refusing preferment to all who would not agree to hold their bene- 
fices on a sort of feudal tenure of chastity ; 2 but he had much less 
influence on his age than such a man as Alberic of Marsico, whose 
story is related as a warning by Peter Damiani. He was married 
(for, in the language of Damiani, " obscaena meretricula" may safely 
be translated a wife), and had a son to whom he transferred his 
bishopric, as though it had been an hereditary fief. Growing tired 
of private life, however, he aspired to the abbacy of Monte Casino. 
That humble foundation of St. Benedict had become a formidable 
military power, of which its neighbors the Capuans stood in constant 
dread. Alberic leagued with them, and a plot was laid by which 
the reigning abbot's eyes were to be plucked out and Alberic placed 
in possession, for which service he agreed to pay a heavy sum, one- 
half in advance, and the rest when the abbot's eyes should be deliv- 
ered to him. The deed was accomplished, but while the envoys were 
bearing to Alberic the bloody tokens of success, they were met by 
tidings of his death, and on comparing notes they found that he had 
expired at the very moment of the perpetration of the atrocious 
crime. 3 

So St. Abbo of Fleury might exhaust his eloquence in inculcating 
the beauty and holiness of immaculate purity, and might pile au- 
thority on authority to demonstrate the punishments which, in this 
world and the next, attended on those who disobeyed the rule ; 4 yet 
when he endeavored, in the monastery of La Reole, a dependency 
on his own great abbey of Fleury, to put his precepts into practice, 



pellabo, qui bellicis occupati negotiis, 
multo stipati latus milite, solidarios 
pretio conducunt, ut nullos sseculi reges 
aut principes noverim adeo instructos 
belloruni legibus, totam armorum dis- 
ciplinam in procinctu niilitise servare, 
digerere turmas, ordines componere, ad 
turbandam ecclesise pacem, et Christi- 
anorum, licet hostium, sanguinem, ef- 
fundendum." — Fulbert. Carnot. Epist. 
112. 

1 Chron. S. Petri Vivi (D'Achery 
Spicileg. II. 470). 

2 This singular oath has been pub- 



lished by Muratori (Antiq. Ital. Diss, 
xx.). — "Ego Andrea presbiter pro- 
mitto coram Deo et omnibus Sanctis, 
et tibi Guarino episcopo, quod carna- 
lem commistionem non faciam; et si 
fecero, et onoris mei et beneficio eccle- 
sise perdam." 

3 S. Petri Damiani Epist. Lib. IV. 
Epist. 8. — Leo Marsicanus (Chron. 
Cassinens. Lib. n. c. 16) asserts that 
in his youth he himself had seen and 
conversed with a priest who had been 
one of the eye-bearers. 

4 Abbon. Floriac. Epist. 14. 



154 



THE TENTH CENTUEY. 



the recalcitrant monks flew to arms and murdered him in the most 

brutal manner, not even sparing the faithful Adalard, who was 

reverently supporting the head of his beloved and dying master. 1 

Damiani might well exclaim, when bewailing the unfortunate fate 

of abbots, on whom was thrown the responsibility of the morals of 

their communities — 

Pliinees si irnitatur, 
Fugit vel expellitur ; 
Si Eli. tunc irridetur 
Atque parvipenditur ; 
Odiosus est, si fervens, 
Et vilis, si tepidus. 2 

How little disposed were the ecclesiastical authorities in general to 
sustain the efforts of puritans like St. Abbo was clearly shown in 
the council of St. Denis, convened in 995 for the purpose of restoring 
the neglected discipline of the church, when, passing over the object 
of its assembling, the reverend fathers devoted their whole attention 
to the more practically interesting question of tithes. 3 

All prelates, however, were not either feudal chiefs or ascetic 
puritans. Some, who were pious and virtuous, had so far become 
infected with the prevailing laxity that they regarded the stricter 
canons as obsolete, and offered no opposition to the domestic aspira- 
tions of their clergy. Thus Constantine, Abbot of the great house 
of St. Symphorian of Metz, in his life of Adalbero II., who was 
Bishop of Metz from 984 to 1005, actually praises him for his lib- 
erality in not refusing ordination to the sons of priests, and attributes 
discreditable motives to those bishops who insisted on the observance 
of the canons prohibiting all such promotions. 4 As Constantine was 
a monk and a disciple of Adalbero, the tone which he adopts shows 



1 Although Aimoin, who was an eye- 
witness, does not specially mention the 
cause that excited the monks to un- 
governable fury, yet a casual allusion 
shows that women were responsible for 
it. — " Caaterum, tantaa cladis compila- 
tores certissime agnoscentes beatum 
obiisse Abbonem, certatim cuncti in 
fugam vertuntur, ita ut, terris reddito 
die, ne mulieres quidam in universis 
forensibus ipsius villse invenirentur 
domibus" — (Abbon. Floriac. Vit. c. 
20) — and the day after his death "una 
ex his mulieribus quae clamore suo 
seditionem concitaverant " became sud- 



denly mad, and was struck with in- 
curable leprosy — (Aimoin. Mirac. S. 
Abbonis c. 2). 

2 Damian. Carm. ccxxi. 

3 Aimoin. Yit. S. Abbonis c. 9. 

4 Episcopi sui temporis aliqui fastu 
superbise, aliqui simplicitate cordis, 
filios ssecularium sacerdotum ad sacros 
ordines admittere dedignabantur, nee 
ad clericatum eos recipere volentes ; 
hie vero beatus, neminem despiciens, 
neminem spernens, passim cunctos 
recipiebat. — Constant. S. Symphor. 
Yit. Adalberon. II.c. 24. 



RELAXATION OF THE CANONS. 



155 



that the higher prelates and the regular clergy were beginning to 
recognize sacerdotal marriage as a necessity of the age. This view 
is strengthened by the fact that no effort to reform an abuse so uni- 
versal was made at the great synod of Dortmund, held in 1005 for 
the special purpose of restoring the discipline of the church. 1 

How completely, indeed, marriage came to be regarded as a matter 
of course is manifest when, in 1019, an assembly of German bishops, 
with the Emperor St. Henry at their head, gravely deliberated over 
the knotty question whether, when a noble permitted his serf to enter 
into holy orders, and the serf, presuming upon his new-born dignities 
and the wealth of his benefices, married a free woman and endeavored 
to withhold his children from the servitude which he still owed to his 
master, such infraction of his master's rights could be permitted out 
of respect to his sacerdotal character. Long and vehement was the 
argument among the learned prelates, until finally St. Henry decided 
the point authoritatively by pronouncing in favor of the servitude of 
the children. 2 

But perhaps the most instructive illustration of the character and 
temper of the age may be found in the three prelates who for more 
than a century filled the rich and powerful archi episcopal see of 
Rouen. Hugh, whose episcopate lasted from 942 to 989, was nom- 
inated at a period when William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, 
was contemplating retirement from the world to shroud his almost 
regal dignity under the cowl of the monk, yet what little is known 
of his archbishop is that, though he was a monk in habit, he was an 
habitual violator of the laws of God 3 — in short, we may presume, a 
man well suited to the wild half-pagan times which witnessed the 
assassination of Duke William and the minority of Richard the 
Fearless. On his death, in 989, Duke Richard, whose piety was in- 
contestable proved by the liberality of his monastic foundations and 
by his zeal for the purity of his monkish proteges, 4 filled the vacant 
see with his son Robert, who held the position until 1037. Robert 



1 Dithmar. Merseberg. Lib. vi. c. 24. 

2 S. Heinrici Sentent. de Conjug. 
Cleric. (Patrologise T. 140 p. 231). 

3 A nullo scriptorum qui de illo sive 
de episcopio ejus locuti sunt, laudatus 
est. Palam memorant quod habitu non 
opere monachus fuerit. 

Successit Hugo, legis Domini violator 
Clara stirpe satus, sed Christi lumine cassus. 
—Order. Vital. Lib. v. c. 10 3 41 . 



4 About the year 990, for instance, 
we find Duke Richard reforming the 
celebrated Abbey of Fecamp and re- 
placing with Benedictines the former 
occupants — canons whose secular mode 
of life outraged his pious sensibilities — 
" contigit Fiscannenses canonicos alio- 
rum canonicorum mores imitari, latas 
perditionis vias ingredi, et rerum tem- 
poralium luxus et desidias voluptuose 
sectari." — Anon. Fiscannens. c. 17. 



156 



THE TENTH CENTURY. 



was publicly and openly married, and by his wife Herleva he had 
three sons, Richard, Rodolf, and William, to whom he distributed his 
vast possessions. Ordericus, the conscientious cenobite of the twelfth 
century, looks, in truth, somewhat askance at this disregard of the 
rules accepted in his own time, 1 yet no blame seems to have attached 
to Robert in the estimation of his contemporaries. The family 
chronicler characterizes him as " Robert bons clers, honestes horn," 
and assures us that he was highly esteemed as a wise and learned 

prelate 

Li secunz fu genz e aperz 

Et si fu apelez Roberz. 

Clerc en firent, mult aprist bien, 

Si fi sage sor tote rien ; 

De Koem out l'arcevesquie 

Honore fu mult e preisie. 2 

His successor, Mauger, son of Duke Richard II., and archbishop 
from 1037 to 1054, was worthy of his predecessors. Abandoned to 
worldly and carnal pleasures, his legitimate son Michael was a dis- 
tinguished knight, and half a century later stood high in the favor of 
Henry I. of England, in whose court he was personally known to 
the historian. 3 The times were changing, however, and Mauger felt 
the full effects of reformatory zeal, for he was deposed in 1054 ; the 
see was bestowed on St. Maurilio, a Norman, who as abbot of Santa 
Maria in Florence had been driven out and nearly poisoned to death 
by his monks on account of the severity of his rule, and the Norman 
clergy, as we shall see hereafter, experienced their share of suffering 
in the mutation of discipline. 



Notwithstanding this all-pervading laxity, the canons of the 
church remained unaltered, and their full force was theoretically 
admitted. Hopeless efforts, moreover, were occasionally made to re- 
establish them, as in the council of Anse in 990, which reminded 



1 Nam conjugem nomine Herlevam, 
ut comes, habuit, ex qua tres filios, 
Richardum, Radulfum et Gruillelmum 
genuit; quibus Ebroicensem comitatum 
et alios honores amplissimos secundum 
jus saeculi distribuit. — Orderic. Vital. 
Lib. v. c. 10 I 42. 

So in the Normanniee Nova Chronica, 
published by Cheruel in 1850, "Iste 
Robertus fuit uxoratus, et ex Herleva 
conjuge sua tres filios habuit, Richar- 
dum, Radulfum et Willelmum." 



2 Benoit, Chronique des Dues de 
Normandie, v. 32427, 24912. We may 
fairly conclude from these expressions 
that Robert was educated for the priest- 
hood. 

3 Voluptatibus carnis mundanisque 
curis indecenter inhassit, filiumque 
nomine Michaelem probum militem et 
legitimum genuit, quern in Anglia jam 
senem rex Henricus honorat et diligit. 
—Orderic. Vital. Lib. v. c. 10 I 43. 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH 



157 



the clergy that intercourse with wives after ordination was punishable 
with forfeiture of benefice and deprivation of priestly functions; 1 
and in that of Poitiers about the year 1000, which prohibited concu- 
bines under pain of degradation. 2 In a similar spirit, a Penitential 
of the period recapitulates the severe punishments of a former age, 
involving degradation and fearfully long terms of penance. 3 All 
this, however, was practically a dead letter. The person who best 
represents the active intelligence of the age was Gerbert of Aurillac, 
the most enlightened man of his time, who, after occupying the 
archiepiscopal seats of Rheims and Ravenna, finally became pope 
under the name of Silvester II. The lightness with which he treats 
the subject of celibacy is therefore fairly a measure of the views 
entertained by the ruling spirits of the church, beyond the narrow 
bounds of cloistered asceticism. Gerbert, describing in a sermon the 
requisites of the episcopal and sacerdotal offices, barely refers to the 
"unius uxoris vir," which he seems to regard in an allegorical rather 
than in a literal sense; he scarcely alludes to chastity, while he 
dilates with much energy on simony, which he truly characterizes as 
the almost universal vice of his contemporaries. 4 So when, in 997, 
he convened the council of Ravenna to regulate the discipline of his 
church, he paid no attention whatever to incontinence, while strenu- 
ously endeavoring to root out simony. 5 At an earlier period, while 
Abbot of Bobbio, in an epistle to his patron, the Emperor Otho II., 
refuting various calumnies of his enemies, he alludes to a report of 
his having a wife and children in terms which show how little im- 
portance he attached to the accusation. 6 



1 Concil Ansan. ann. 990 c. 5. 

2 Concil. Pictaviens. c. ann. 1000 c. 



3 Si clericus superioris gradus, qui 
uxorem habuit, et post confessionem vel 
honorem clericatus iterum earn cogno- 
verit, sciat sibi adulterium commisisse, 
sicut superiore sententia unusquisque 
juxta ordine suo poeniteat [i. e. dia- 
conus et monachi vn. (annos) in. ex 
his pane et aqua. Presbyter x. Epis- 
copus XII., v. ex his pane et aqua.] 
... Si quis clericus aut monachus 
postquam se devoverit ad ssecularem 
habitum iterum reversus fuerit aut 
uxorem duxerit, x. annos poeniteat, in. 
ex his in pane et aqua, nunquam postea 



in conjugium copuletur. — Judicium 
Pcenitentis ex Sacrament. Ehenaug. 

4 Gerberti Sermo de Informat. Epis- 
copor. 

5 Gerberti Opp. p. 197 sqq. (Ed. 

Migne). 

6 " Taceo de me quern novo locutionis 
genere equum emissarium susurrant, 
uxorem et filios habentem, propter 
partem familiae mese de Francia recol- 
lectam." — Gerberti Epist. Sect. I. No. 
xi. — Gerbert's reputation for sanctity 
is not such as to render scandalous the 
suspicion that the family thus gathered 
around him might afford legitimate oc- 
casion for gossip, notwithstanding his 
abbacy and the fact that he had been 
bred in a convent. 



158 THE TENTH CENTURY. 

Such, at the opening of the eleventh century, was the condition 
of the church as regards ascetic celibacy. Though the ancient 
canons were still theoretically in force, they were practically obsolete 
everywhere. Legitimate marriage or promiscuous profligacy was 
almost universal, in some places unconcealed, in others covered with 
a thin veil of hypocrisy, according as the temper of the ruling 
prelate might be indulgent or severe. So far, therefore, Latin 
Christianity had gained but little in its struggle of six centuries 
with human nature. Whether the next eight hundred years will 
show a more favorable result remains for us to develop. 

Before proceeding, however, to discuss the events of the succeed- 
ing century, it will be well to cast a rapid glance at a portion of 
Christendom, the isolation of which has thus far precluded it from 
receiving attention. 



XL 
SAXON ENGLAND. 



Whatever of virtue or purity may have distinguished the church 
of Britain under Roman domination was speedily extinguished in 
the confusion of the Saxon occupation. Gildas, who flourished in 
the first half of the sixth century, describes the clergy of his time 
as utterly corrupt. 1 He apparently would have been satisfied if the 
bishops had followed the Apostolic precept and contented themselves 
with being husbands of one wife; and he complains that instead of 
bringing up their children in chastity, the latter were corrupted by 
the evil example of their parents. 2 Under Saxon rule, Christianity 
was probably well-nigh trampled out, except in the remoter moun- 
tain districts, to be subsequently restored in its sacerdotal form under 
the direct auspices of Rome. 

Meanwhile, the British Isles were the theatre of another and in- 
dependent religious movement. While the Saxons were subverting 
Christianity in Britain, St. Patrick was successfully engaged in lay- 
ing the foundations of the Irish church. 3 We have seen (p. 76) that 
celibacy was not one of the rules enforced in the infant Irish 



1 Ita ut clerici (quod non absque 
dolore cordis fateor) impudici,bilingues, 
ebrii, turpis lucri cupidi, habentes fidem, 
et ut verius dicam, infidelitatem, in 
conscientia impura, non probati in 
bona, sed in malo opere prsesciti minis- 
trantes, et innumera crimina habentes, 
sacro ministerio adsciscantur. — Gildse 
de Excid. Britan. Pt. in. cap. 23— Of. 
cap. 1, 2, 3. 

2 "Unius uxor is mrum" Quid ita 
apud nos quoque contemnitur, quasi 
non audiretur, vel idem dicere et virum 
uxorum? . . . Sed quid erit, ubi nee 
pater nee Alius mali genitoris exemplo 
pravatus conspicitur castus ? — Gildse 
loc. cit. 



3 Modern criticism has raised doubts 
as to the existence of St. Patrick. 
Whether they are well- grounded or not 
is a matter of little importance here, as 
we are concerned onty with the institu- 
tions bearing his name, which institu- 
tions undoubtedly did exist. Mean- 
while I may add that few remote events 
appear to rest on better authority than 
the conversion of the G-aeidhil, about 
the year 438, by a person known to his 
contemporaries as Patraic, or Patricius ; 
and the name of Cain Patraic applied 
to the secular code attributed to him, 
dates from a very high antiquity. — See 
Senchus Mor, Hancock's Ed. Vol. I. 
Dublin, 1865. 



160 



SAXON ENGLAND. 



church ; but this was of comparatively little moment, for that church 
was almost exclusively monastic in its character, and preserved the 
strictest views as to the observance of the vows by those who had 
once taken them. 1 That the principles thus established were long 
preserved is evident from a curious collection of Hibernian canons, 
made in the eighth century, of which selections have been published 
by d'Achery and Martene. Some of these are credited by the com- 
pilers to Gildas, and thus show the discipline of the early British as 
well as of the Irish church. 2 Their tendency is towards the purest 
asceticism. A penance of forty days was even enjoined on the 
ecclesiastic who, without thought of evil, indulged in the pleasure of 
converse with a woman. 3 So in Ireland, a council held in 672 
decrees that a priest guilty of unchastity, although removable accord- 
ing to the strict rule of discipline, may be allowed, if truly con- 
trite, to retain his position on undergoing ten years of penitence 4 — 
an alternative, one might think, rather of severity than of mercy. 
One canon attributed to Gildas shows that in the British monastic 
system unchastity was considered the most heinous of offences, and 
also that it was sufficiently common ; 5 while another alludes to the 
same vice among prelates as justifying immediate excommunication. 6 
The missionary career by which the Irish church repaid the debt 
that it owed to Christianity is well known, and the form of faith 
which it spread was almost exclusively monastic. Luanus, one of 
the monks of Benchor, is said to have founded no less than a hundred 
monasteries ; 7 and when Columba established the Christian religion 
in Scotland, he carried with him this tendency to asceticism and 
inculcated it among his Pictish neophytes. His Rule enjoins the 
most absolute purity of mind as well as body ; 8 and that his teach- 
ings were long obeyed is evident when we find that, a hundred and 



i Synod. S. Patricii c. 9, 17 (Haddan 
& Stubbs II. 328-9)— Synod. II. S. 
Patricii c. 17, 21 (Ibid. 335-6). 

2 Prsefat. Gildse de Pcenitent. cap. 1 
(Martene Thesaur. IV. 7). 

3 Lib. de Kerned. Peccat. cap. de 
Fornicat. (Martene IV. 23). —Cf. 
Synod. Aquilon. Britan. cap. 1 (Ibid, 
p. 9). 

* In this long course of penance, 
three months were to be spent in soli- 
tary confinement, with bread and water 
at night ; then eighteen months in fast- 



ing on bread and water; then bread 
and water three days in the week for 
five years and three months ; then bread 
and water on Fridays for the remaining 
three years. — Gratian. Dist. lxxxii. c. 
5. 

5 Arbedoc et Haelhucar Lib. xxxviii. 
cap. 7 (D'Achery I. 500). 

6 Haddan & Stubbs, Councils of 
Great Britain, I. 112. 

7 Bernardi Vit. S. Malachiae cap. vi. 

8 S. Columbani Regul. cap. vi. 



CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS. 



161 



fifty years later, his disciples are praised for the chastity and zeal 
of their self-denying lives by the Venerable Bede, who was fully 
alive to the importance of the rule, and who would have wasted no 
such admiration on them had they lived in open disregard of it. 1 
Equally convincing is the fact that Scotland and the Islands were 
claimed to be under the supremacy of the see of York, and that 
during the long controversy requisite to break down their schismatic 
notions respecting the date of Easter and the shape of the tonsure, 
not a word was said that can lead to the supposition that they held 
any unorthodox views on the far more important subject of sacer- 
dotal purity. 2 

When, a hundred and fifty years after the Anglo-Saxon invasion, 
Gregory the Great undertook the conversion of the islanders, the 
missionaries whom he despatched under Augustin of course carried 
with them the views and ideas which then held undisputed sway in 
Rome. Apparently, however, asceticism found little favor at first 
with the new converts, rendering it difficult for Augustin to obtain 
sufficient co-laborers among his disciples, for he applied to Gregory 
to learn whether he might allow those who could not restrain their 
passions to marry and yet remain in the ministry. To this Gregory 
replied evasively, stating, what Augustin already knew, that the 
lower grades might marry, but making no reference whatever to the 
higher orders. 3 He apparently did not wish to assume the responsi- 
bility of relaxing the rule, while willing perhaps to connive at its 



1 Keliquit (Columbanus) successores 
magna continentia ac divino amore 
regularique institutione insignes . . . 
pietatis et castitatis opera diligenter 
observantes (Bedse Hist. Eccles. Lib. 
III. c. 4, cf. also c. 26). Bede's ortho- 
doxy on the subject is unquestionable: 
' ' Sacerdotibus ut semper altari queant 
assistere, semper ab uxoribus conti- 
nendum, semper castitas observanda 
prsecipitur" (In Lucas Evang. Ex- 
posit. Lib. I. cap. 1). — " Quanta sunt 
maledictione digni qui probibent nu- 
bere et dispositionem coelestis decreti 
quasi a diabolo repertam condemnant ? 
. . . sed magis bonoranda, majore est 
digna benedictione virginitas." (Hex- 
semeron. Lib. I. sub tit. Benedixitque 
illis.) See also De Tabernac. Lib. ill. 
c. 9, already referred to (p. 65). 



2 See, for instance, the proceedings 
of the synod of Whitby in 664, where 
the differences between the Scottish 
and Koman observances were fully dis- 
cussed (Spelman. Concil. I. 145). So 
when, in 633, Honorius I. addressed 
the Scottish clergy, reproving their 
false computation of Easter and their 
Pelagianism, he made no allusion to 
any want of clerical purity (Bedae Hist. 
Eccles. Lib. n. c. 19). 

3 " Opto enim doceri an clerici conti- 
nere non valentes, possint contrahere ; 
et si contraxerint, an debeant ad ssecu- 
lum redire" — to which Gregory re- 
sponds with a long exhortation as to the 
duties of the ' ' clerici extra sacros ordines 
constituti " — Gregor. I. Kegist. Lib. xi. 
Epist. lxiv. Eespons. 2. 



11 



162 SAXON ENGLAND. 

suspension in order to encourage the infant Anglican church. If 
so, the indulgence was but temporary. 

The attempt has been made to prove that marriage was permitted 
in the early Saxon church, and support for this supposition has been 
sought from a clause in the Dooms of King Ina, of which the date 
is about the year 700, fixing the wer-gild of the son of a bishop. 
But the rubric of the law shows that it refers rather to a godson ; 1 
and even if it were not so, we have already seen how often in France, 
at the same period, the episcopal office was bestowed on eminent or 
influential laymen, who were obliged on its acceptance to part with 
their wives. The Magdeburg Centuriators, indeed, describe a council 
held in London in 712 or 714, by which image-worship was intro- 
duced and separation between priests and their wives was decreed, 2 
but there is no authority cited, nor is such an assembly elsewhere 
alluded to, even Cave pronouncing it evidently supposititious. 3 

These speculations are manifestly groundless. The celebrated 
Theodore, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690, in his 
Liber Poenitentialis, forbids the marriage of the clergy under pain of 
deposition, and all intercourse with such wives was punished by life- 
long penance as laymen ; not only were digami ineligible to ordination, 
but also even those who had kept concubines ; and the zeal for purity 
is carried so far that even baptism performed by priests guilty of for- 
nication was pronounced invalid and had to be repeated — an expres- 
sion of reprobation which it would be hard to parallel elsewhere in the 
history of the church. 4 When such were the views of the primate, and 
such were the laws which he prescribed, we cannot imagine that under 
his vigorous rule these canons were permitted to be inoperative in a 
church sufficiently enlightened to produce the learning and piety of 
men like Bede and St. Aldhelm ; where the admiration of virginity was 
as great as that which finds utterance in the writings of these fathers, 5 



1 Si episcopi filius sit, sit dimidium 
hoc (Leg. Inae c. lxxyl). The rubric 
of the law is " De occidente filiolum 
vel patriimm alicujus " (Thorpe, An- 
cient Laws of England, II. 472). 

2 Denique promulgator decretum . . . 
de abdicandis sacerdotum uxoribus. — 
Spelman. Concil. I. 216. 

3 Cave, Script. Eccles. Hist. pp. 
424-5 (Ed. 1705). 

4 Theodori Poenitent. i. ix. 1, 4, 5, 6, 
10; II. ii. 12 (Haddan & Stubbs, III 



5 See, for instance, St. Aldhelm' 
rhapsodies, " De laudibus virginitatis ' ' 
and "De laudibus virginum." The 
orthodoxy of Bede on this question has 
already been alluded to. 

According to the legend, St. Aldhelm 
tried his virtue by the same crucial ex- 
periments as those resorted to by some 
of the ardent devotees of the third 
century, concealing his motive in order 
that his humility might enjoy the 
benefit of undeserved reprobation. 
"Sancti Aldelmi Malmesburiensis, qui 



184-5 192). inter duas puellas, unam ab uno latere, 



CELIBACY IN THE EARLY SAXON CHURCH. 



163 



and the principles of asceticism were so influential as to lead a power- 
ful monarch like Ina to retire with his queen, Ethelberga, from the 
throne which he had gloriously filled, to the holy restrictions of a 
monastic life. 

Ecgberht, who was Archbishop of York from 732 to 766, is almost 
equally decisive in his condemnation of priestly irregularities, though 
he returned to the received doctrine of the church that baptism could 
not be repeated. 1 It is also probable that even the Britons, who 
derived their Christianity from the older and purer sources of the 
primitive church, preserved the rule with equal reverence. At the 
request of a national council, St. Aldhelm addressed an epistle to 
the Welsh king, Geruntius, to induce him to reform his church so as 
to bring it within the pale of Catholic unity. To accomplish this, 
he argues at length upon the points of difference, discussing the 
various errors of faith and discipline, such as the shape of the ton- 
sure, the date of Easter, &c, but he is silent with regard to marriage 
or concubinage. 2 Had the Welsh church been schismatic in this 
respect, so ardent a celibatarian as Aldhelm would certainly not 
have omitted all reference to a subject of so much interest to him. 
The inference is therefore justifiable that no difference of this nature 
existed. 

We may fairly conclude that the discipline of the church in these 
matters was reasonably well maintained by the Saxon clergy, with 
the exception of the monasteries, the morals of which institutions 
appear to have been deplorably and incurably loose. About the 
middle of the seventh century John IV. reproves the laxity of the 
Saxon monasticism under which the holy virgins did not hesitate to 
marry. 3 In 734 we find Bede, in an epistle to Ecgberht of York, 
advising him to create suffragan bishoprics and to endow them from 
the monastic foundations, of which there were a countless number 
totally neglectful of all monastic discipline, whose reformation could 
apparently be accomplished in no other way. 4 St. Boniface, whose 
zeal on the subject has already been sufficiently made manifest, about 



alteram ab altero, singulis noctibus ut 
ab hominibus diffamaretur, a Deo vero 
cui nota fuerat conscientia ipsius et 
continentia copiosius in futurum remu- 
neraretur, jacuisse describitur. " — 
G-irald. Cambrens. G-emm. Eccles. Dist. 
II. cap. xv. 

1 Ecgberti Poenitent. i. u. 3 ; it. 2, 



7, 8; y. 1-22.— Ejusd. Dialog, v. 
(Haddan & Stubbs, III. 406, 419-23). 

2 Epist. ad G-ernntium. — Aldbelmi 
Opp. p. 83 (Ed. Oxon. 1844). 

3 Johan. PP. IV. Epist. iii. 
* Bedae Epist. n. 



164 



SAXON ENGLAND. 



the year 746 paused in his reformation of the French priesthood to 
urge upon Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, the necessity of 
repressing the vices of the Saxon ecclesiastics. He dwells at con- 
siderable length upon their various crimes and misdemeanors — drunk- 
enness, unclerical garments, neglect of their sacred functions, &c. — 
but he does not accuse them of unchastity, which he could not well 
have avoided doing had there been colorable grounds for such a 
charge. In fact, the only allusion connected with the question in 
his epistle is a request that some restrictions should be laid upon the 
permissions granted to women and nuns for pilgrimage to Rome, on 
account of the attendant dangers to their virtue; in illustration of 
which he states the lamentable fact that scarcely a city in Lombardy, 
France, or the Rhinelands but had Saxon courtesans derived from 
this source, to the shame and scandal of the whole church. 1 

Pope Zachary seconded these representations, and in 747 Cuth- 
bert, yielding to the impulsion, held the celebrated council of Clovesho, 
which adopted thirty canons on discipline, to remedy the disorders 
enumerated by Boniface. Among these, the only ones directed 
against unchastity relate solely to the nunneries, which were repre- 
sented as being in a condition of gross immorality. 2 The council 
does not spare the vices of the secular clergy, and its silence with 
respect to their purity fairly permits the inference that there was not 
much to correct with regard to it, for had licentiousness been so prev- 
alent that Cuthbert had feared to denounce it, or had sacerdotal 
marriage been passed over as lawful, the zeal of St. Boniface would 
have led to an explosion, and Zachary would not have sanctioned the 
proceedings by his approval. 

The same argument is applicable to the council of Chelsea, held 
in 787 by the legates of Adrian I., under the presidency of Gregory, 



1 Bonifacii Epist. 105. 

2 Can. 20 directs greater strictness 
with regard to visitors, "unde non sint 
sanctimonialium domicilia turpium 
confabulationum, commessationum, 
ebrietatum, luxuriantiumque cubilia." 
Can. 28 orders that nuns after taking 
the veil shall not wear lay garments ; 
and can. 29 that clerks, monks, and 
nuns shall rot live with the laity. 
(Spelman. Concil. I. 250-4. — Haddan 
& Stubbs, III. 369, 374.) 

This demoralization of the nunneries 
is not to be wondered at when Boniface, 



in reproving Ethelbald, King of Mercia, 
for his evil courses, could say, " Et 
adhuc, quod pejus est, qui nobis nar- 
rant adjiciunt : quod hoc scelus maxi- 
me cum Sanctis monialibus et sacratis 
Deo virginibus per monasteria com- 
missum sit." This sacrilegious licen- 
tiousness, indeed, would seem almost to 
have been habitual with the Anglo- 
Saxon reguli for Boniface instances the 
fate of Ethelbald's predecessor Ceolred 
and of Osred of Northumbria who had 
both came to an untimely end in conse- 
quence of indulgence in similar evil 
courses. — Bonifacii Epist. 19. 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH. 



165 



Bishop of Ostia. The vices and shortcomings of the Anglican 
church were there sharply reproved, but no allusion was made to any 
unchastity prevailing among the priesthood, with the exception, as 
before, of nuns, on whom we may infer that previous reformatory 
efforts had been wasted ; l and in an epistle from Alcuin to Ethelred 
King of Northumbria near the close of the century there is the same 
reference to nuns, without special condemnation of the other classes 
of the clergy. 2 That this reticence did not arise from any license 
granted for marriage is conclusively shown by the interpolation of 
the word laieus in the text I. Cor. vn. 2, which is quoted among 
the canons adopted. 3 To the same effect are the canons of the 
council of Chelsea, in 816, in which the only allusion to such matters 
is a provision to prevent the election of unfit persons to abbacies, 
and to punish monks and nuns who secularize themselves. 4 

On the other hand, it is true that about this time St. Swithun, 
after obtaining orders, was openly married ; but his biographer states 
that he had a special dispensation from Leo III., and that he con- 
sented to it because, on the death of his parents, he was the sole 
representative of his family. 5 As Swithun was tutor to Ethelwulf, 
son of King Ecgberht, the papal condescension is by no means im- 
possible. 



Such was the condition of the Anglo-Saxon church at this period. 
During the century which follows, the materials for tracing the 
vicissitudes of the question before us are of the scantiest description. 
The occasional councils which were held have left but meagre records 
of their deliberations, with few or no references to the subject of 
celibacy. It is probable, however, that a rapid deterioration in the 
strictness of discipline occurred, for even the power of the great 
Bretwalda Ecgberht was unequal to the task of repressing effectually 
the first invasions of the Northmen, and under his feebler successors 
they grew more and more destructive, until they culminated in the 
anarchy which gave occasion to the romantic adventures of Alfred. 

It is to this period of darkness that we must attribute the intro- 



1 Concil. Calchuth. can. 15, 16 
(Haddan & Stubbs, III. 455-6). 

2 Haddan & Stubbs, Councils, etc., 
III. 493. 

3 Propter fornicationem fugiendam 
unusquisque laieus suam uxorem le- 



gitimam habeat. — Concil. Calchuth. 
can. 16. 

* Concil. Celicyth. ann. 816 can. 4 
8 (Haddan & Stubbs, III. 580-3). 

5 Goscelini Vit. S. Swithuni c. 1,2. 



166 



SAXON ENGLAND. 



duction of sacerdotal marriage, which became so firmly established 
and was finally so much a matter of course that it attracted no 
special attention, until the efforts made for its abrogation late in the 
succeeding century. When Alfred undertook to restore order in his 
recovered kingdom, the body of the laws which he compiled contains 
no allusion to celibacy, except as regards the chastity of nuns. The 
same may be said of the constitutions of Odo, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, to which the date of 943 is attributed, although they con- 
tain instructions as to the conduct of bishops, priests, and clerks 1 — 
whence we may infer that the marriage even of consecrated virgins 
was not uncommon, and that it was the only infraction of the rule 
which aroused the opposition of the hierarchy. Simple immorality 
called forth an occasional enactment, as in the laws of Edward and 
Guthrun about the year 906, and in those of Edmund I. in 944, 2 
yet even to this but little attention seems to have been attracted, 
until St. Dunstan undertook a reformation which was sorely needed. 
St. Dunstan himself, although regularly bred to the church, with 
the most brilliant prospects both from his distinguished abilities and 
his powerful kindred, betrothed himself in marriage after receiving 
the lower orders. His uncle, St. Elphege, Bishop of Winchester — 
apparently a churchman of the stricter school — vehemently opposed 
the union, but Dunstan was immovable in his determination. Elphege, 
finding his worldly wisdom set at nought, appealed to the assistance 
of heaven. His prayer was answered, and Dunstan was attacked 
with a mysterious and loathsome malady, under which his iron reso- 
lution gave way. He sought Elphege, took the monastic vow (the 
only inseparable bar to matrimony), and was ordained a priest. 3 
This stern experience might have taught him charity for the weakness 
of natures less unbending than his own, but his temperament was not 
one to pause half-way. If, too, religious conviction urged him to 
the task of restoring the forgotten discipline of the church, worldly 
ambition might reasonably claim its share in his motives. He could 
not but feel that his authority would be vastly enhanced by rendering 



1 Leg. Aluredi c. 8, 18. — Constit. 
Odon. Cantuar. c. 7. 

2 Leg. Edwardi et Guthrun. c. 3. — 
Leg. Eadmund. Eccles. c. 1. 

3 Bridfrit. Vit. S. Dunstan. c. 5, 7. 
Bridfrith was a disciple of St. Dunstan, 
and composed his biography but a few 
years after the death of his patron. He 



does not state what was the position of 
Dunstan at the time of his betrothal ; 
but Osbern, a hundred years later, as- 
serts that he had acquired the lower 
orders only, and that he received the 
priesthood and took the monastic vows 
simultaneously. — Osberni Vit. S. Dun- 
stan. c. 8, 12. 



COMMENCEMENT OF EEFORM. 



167 



the great ecclesiastical body dependent entirely upon him as the rep- 
resentative of Rome, and by sundering the ties which divided the 
allegiance due wholly to the church. 

The opportunity to effect a reformation presented itself when the 
young king, Edgar the Pacific, in 963 violated all the dictates of 
honor and religion in his adventure with the nun at Wilton. Her 
resistance attested her innocence, and the birth of a daughter did 
not prevent her subsequent canonization as St. Wilfreda; but Edgar's 
crime and remorse were only the more heightened. When the terror- 
stricken king sought pardon and absolution, Dunstan was prepared 
with his conditions. Seven years of penitence, during which he was 
to abstain from wearing the crown, was the personal infliction imposed 
on him, but the most important portion of the sentence was that by 
which the vices of the king were to be redeemed by the enforced 
virtues of his subjects. He promised the founding of monasteries 
and the reformation of the clergy ; and his implicit obedience to the 
demands of his ghostly judge is shown, perhaps, less in the fact that 
his coronation did not take place until 973, than in the active mea- 
sures immediately set on foot with respect to the morals of the eccle- 
siastics. 1 

That their morals, indeed, needed reformation is the unanimous 
testimony of all the chroniclers of the period. Among all the 
monasteries of England, formerly so noted for their zeal and pros- 
perity, only those of Glastonbury and Abingdon were inhabited by 
monks. 2 The rest had fallen into ruin, or were occupied by the 
secular clergy, with their wives, or worse, and were notorious as 
places of the most scandalous dissipation and disorder. 3 So low was 
the standard of morality that priests even scrupled not to put away 
the wives of whom they grew tired, and to form new connections, of 
open and public adultery; 4 and so common had this become that a 



1 Osbern. Vit. S. Dunstan. c. 35. — 
Florent. Wigorn. ann. 964, 973.— 
Matt. "Westmonast. ann. 963. 

2 Vit. S. ^Ethelwoldi c. 14. 

3 Si ista solerti scrutinio curassetis? 
non tarn horrenda et abominanda ad 
aures nostras de clericis pervenissent 
. . . dicam dolens quo modo diffluant 
in commessationibus, in ebrietatibus, in 
cubilibus et impudicitiis, ut jam domus 
clericorum putentur prostibula mere- 
tricum, conciliabulum histrionum . . . 
Ad hoc ergo exhauserunt patres nostri 



thesauros suos ? ad hoc fiscus regius , 
detractis redditibus multis elargitus est ? 
ad hoc ecclesiis Christi agros et posses- 
siones regalis munificentia contulit, ut 
deliciis clericorum meretrices ornentur ? 
luxuriosse convivse prseparentur ? canes 
ac aves et talia ludicra comparentur ? 
Hoc milites clamant, plebs submurmu- 
rat, mimi cantant et saltant, et vos 
negligitis, vos parcitis, vos dissimulatis. 
— Oratio Edgari ann. 969 (Spelman. 
Concil. I. 477). 

4 Yit. S. JGthelwold. c. 12. 



168 



SAXON ENGLAND. 



code of ecclesiastical law, probably drawn up about this time, 
reproves this systematic bigamy, and appears to tacitly authorize 
marriage as legitimate and honorable. 1 One author declares that 
none but paupers could be found willing to bind themselves by 
monastic vows ; 2 and another asserts, with every show of reason, that 
the clergy were not only not superior to the laity in any respect, but 
were even far worse in the scandals of their daily life. 3 

When King Edgar made his peace with the church by consenting 
to the vicarious penitence of the priesthood, three rigid and austere 
monks were the ardent ministers of the royal determination. Of St. 
Dunstan, the primate of England, I have already spoken. St. 
Ethelwold, his pupil, Abbot of Abingdon, was elevated to the see of 
Winchester, and commenced the movement by expelling the occupants 
of the monastery there. A few who consented to take monastic 
vows were allowed to remain, and the remainder were replaced by 
monks ; but even St. Ethelwold's rigor had to bend to the depravity 
of the age, and he was forced to relax the rigidity of discipline in 
non-essentials in order to obtain recruits of a better class. 4 The 
difficulties he encountered are indicated by the legend which relates 
that he was poisoned in his wine and carried from table to his couch 
in excruciating torment, where he lay hopeless till, reproaching him- 
self with want of faith, he repeated the text — "Et si mortiferum 
quid biberint, non eis nocebitur," and was cured on the instant. 5 
That his canons were quite capable of such an attempt may be 
assumed from the description given of them in the bull procured by 
Dunstan from John XIII., authorizing their ejection by the king. 
The pope does not hesitate to stigmatize them as vessels of the devil, 
hateful to all good Christians on account of their inveterate and in- 
eradicable wickedness. 6 

The third member of the reforming triumvirate was St. Oswald, 



1 " Gif preorst cwenan forlaete and 
core nime, ana)>ema sit" (Leg. Pres- 
byt. Northumbriens. c. 35). Spemian's 
translation of this " Si presbyter con- 
cubinam suam dimiserit et aliam acce- 
perit anathema sit" (Concil. I. 498) is 
perhaps hardly correct. Cwene can be 
interpreted in either a good or a bad 
sense, as a wife or a mistress ; and the 
terms of the law show that the connec- 
tion was a recognized one, the sin con- 
sisting in disregarding it. If the priest's 
companion were only a concubine, his 



guilt would not be measurably increased 
by merely changing his unlawful con- 
sort. 

2 Chron. de Abbat. Abbendoniae 
(Chron. Abingdon. II. 279). 

3 Osberni Yit. S. Dunstan. c. 36. 

4 Chron. de. Abbat. Abbendon. loc. 



clt. 



5 Vit. S. JEthelwold. c. 14, 15. 

6 Johannis PP. XIII. Epist. xxii. 



SECULAR CLERGY ASSAILED. 



169 



Bishop of Worcester, who undertook a similar transformation of the 
clergy occupying the monastery of St. Mary in his cathedral city. 
Many promises they made to conform to his wishes, and many times 
they eluded the performance, till, losing patience with the prolonged 
procrastination, he one day entered the chapel with a quantity of 
monkish habits as they were vigorously chanting " Servite Domino 
in timore," when he made practical application of the text by forc- 
ing them to put on the garments and take the vows on the spot, 
under the alternative of instant expulsion. 1 

These proceedings met the unqualified approbation of Edgar, who 
in 964, by his "Charter of Oswalde's Law," confirmed the ejection 
of the recusants who refused to part with their wives, and transferred 
all their rights and possessions to the newcomers. In the same 
document he boasted that he had instituted forty-seven abbeys of 
monks and nuns, and that he hoped to increase the number to fifty. 2 
The same year a similar summary process was carried out in the 
convents of Chertsey and Winchester; 3 and in 966 Edgar was able 
to boast of the numerous religious houses throughout England which 
he had purified by replacing lascivious clerks with pious monks. 4 

These efforts, however, tended only to restore the monastic founda- 
tions to their original position, and left the secular clergy untouched, 
except in so far as a few of them were deprived of the comfortable 
quarters which they had usurped in the abbeys. This immunity it 
was no part of Dunstan's plan to permit, and accordingly Edgar 
issued a series of laws restoring the obsolete ecclesiastical discipline 
throughout his kingdom. By this code a lapse from virtue on the 
part of a priest or monk was visited with the same penalty as homi- 
cide, with a fast of ten years ; for a deacon the period of penitence 
was seven years ; for the lower grades, six years. The monk, priest, 
or deacon who maintained relations with his wife was subjected to 
the same punishment ; but there is no mention of degradation or 
deprivation of benefice. 5 

The struggle was long, and at one time the three reformers seem 
to have grown wearied with the stubborn resistance which they met, 
while the zeal of King Edgar grew more fiery as, with the true spirit 



1 Concil. sub Dunstano (Spelman. I. 
480). 

2 iEdgari Charta de Oswalde's Law 
(Spelman. I. 433). 

3 Anglo-Saxon Chron. ann. 964. 



4 Monach. Hydens. Leg. c. 8, 9 (Spel- 
man. I. 438). 

5 Canon, sub Edgaro — Mod. impo- 
nend. Pcenitent. c. 28, 29 (Thorpe, II. 

273). 



170 SAXON ENGLAND. 

of the huntsman, he followed up the prey, his ardor increasing as 
the chase grew more difficult. In 969 he eloquently addressed 
Dunstan, Ethelwold, and Oswald, blaming their lukewarmness in 
the good cause, and promising them every support and assistance in 
removing this opprobrium from the church. 1 Stimulated by these 
reproaches, Dunstan summoned a council which adopted a canon 
depriving unchaste priests of their benefices. 2 Still the conflict con- 
tinued, and a charter dated in 974, the last year of Edgar's reign, 
shows that he persevered to the end with unabated zeal. 3 

The contumacious clerks may have been silenced ; they were not 
subdued, and they but waited their opportunity. It came in 975, 
with the early death of Edgar and with the dissensions caused by 
his widow, Elfritha, who endeavored to deprive of the succession his 
eldest son, the youthful Edward, fruit of a former marriage. During 
the confusion, the ejected priests banded together and bribed Elf here, 
the powerful Ealdorman of Mercia, together with some other mag- 
nates, to espouse their cause. In many abbeys the regulars were 
expelled and the priests with their wives were reinstated. In East 
Anglia, however, the nobles took sides with the monks, and, rising 
in arms, valiantly defended the monasteries. At length, on the 
accession of Edward, a council was assembled to make final dispo- 
sition of the question. The married priests were present, and prom- 
ised amendment ; their noble protectors pleaded earnestly for them ; 
the boy-king was moved, and was about to pronounce in their favor, 
when a miracle preserved the purity of the church. The council 
was sitting in the refectory of the monastery of Hyde, the head- 
quarters of the ascetic party ; Edward and Dunstan were enthroned 
separately from the rest, with their ba.cks to a wall on which, between 
them, hung a small crucifix. At the critical moment, just as the 
king was yielding, the crucifix spoke, in a low tone inaudible to all 
save Edward and the primate, "Let not this thing be done" — the 
mandate was imperative, and the married clergy lost their cause. 4 

Still the stubborn priests and their patrons held out, and another 
miracle was necessary — this time a more impressive one. A second 
council was called to discuss the matter, and was held at Calne in 
978. During the heat of the argument the floor gave way, carrying 

1 Oratio Edgari (S^elman. I. 476). 4 Florent. Wigorn. ann. 975. — Matt. 

2 a „-i™« t zero Westmonast. Lib. in. c. 18. — Chron. 

2 S P elman - L 479 - | Winton. (Spelman. I. 490-2). 

3 G-uillel. Malmesbur. Lib. n. c. 8. i 



FAILURE OF DUNSTAN'S REFORMS. 



171 



with it the whole assembly, except St. Dunstan, who remained tri- 
umphantly and miraculously perched upon a joist, while his adver- 
saries lay groaning below, in every variety of mutilation. 1 His 
triumph, however, was but short. The same year the pious child 
Edward perished through the intrigues of Elfritha, whose son, Eth- 
elred the Unready, succeeded to the throne. The mixed political 
and religious character of these events is shown by the canonization 
of Edward, who, though yet a child, was regarded as a martyr by 
the ascetics, whose cause he had espoused. 

As Elfritha had evidently sought the alliance of the secular clergy 
to strengthen her party, her success proved disastrous to the cause 
of reform. The respite of peace, too, which had blessed the island 
during the vigorous reigns of Athelstan the Magnificent and Edgar 
the Pacific, gave place to the ravages invited by the feeble and vacil- 
lating policy of Ethelred the Unready ; the incursions of the pagan 
Danes became more and more frequent and terrible ; and what little 
respect had been inculcated for the strictness of discipline was speedily 
forgotten in the anarchy which ensued. 

The efforts of the reformers appear to have extended even to the 
British churches of Wales, which had followed Saxon example in 
abandoning celibacy. The Brut y Tywysogion relates that about 
the year 861 the priests were forbidden to marry without dispensa- 
tion from the pope ; but they did not submit, and the disturbances 
thus provoked rendered necessary the abandonment of the effort, 
so that sacerdotal marriage continued unchecked. 2 We shall see 
hereafter that in the Principality the custom remained in full vigor 
until the thirteenth century was well advanced. 

How thoroughly the work of Dunstan and Edgar was undone in 
England is sufficiently indicated by the efforts made not long after, 
with the consent of Ethelred, to introduce some feeble restraints upon 
the prevailing immorality. About the year 1006 we find the chief 
monastery of England, Christ Church at Canterbury, in full posses- 
sion of the secular clergy, whose irregularities were so flagrant that 
even Ethelred was forced to expel them, and to fill their places with 
monks. 3 What was the condition of discipline among the secular 



1 Matt. Westmonast. Lib. in. c. 18. 
Henry of Huntingdon, however (Lib. 
V. ann. 978), who, as a secular priest 
and the son of a priest, did not look 
upon the labors of St. Dunstan with 
much favor, insinuates that the accident 
was intended to foreshow that the as- 



sembled wisdom and power of England 
were about to fall similarly from the 
grace of God. 

2 Haddan & Stubbs I. 286. 

3 Privileg. Reg. Ethelredi (Spelman. 
I. 504). 



172 



SAXON ENGLAND 



priests may be guessed from the reformatory efforts of St. iElfric, 
who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 995 to 1006. In his series 
of canons the first eight are devoted to inculcating the necessity of 
continence ; after quoting the Mcene canon, he feels it to be so much 
at variance with the habits and customs of the age, that he actually 
deprecates the surprise of his clergy at hearing a rule so novel and 
so oppugnant to the received practice, " as though there was no 
danger in priests living as married men;" he anticipates the argu- 
ments which they will bring against him, and refutes them with more 
gravity than success. 1 There is also extant, under the name of St. 
iElfric, a pastoral epistle, which is regarded as supposititious by 
some critics ; but its passages on this subject are too similar in spirit 
to the canons of iElfric to be reasonably rejected. They show how 
hopeless was the effort to maintain the purity desired by the ecclesi- 
astical authorities, and that entreaties and exhortations were uttered 
merely from a sense of duty, and with hardly an expectation of com- 
manding attention. " This, to you, priests, will seem grievous, be- 
cause ye have your misdeeds in custom, so that it seems to yourselves 
that ye have no sin in so living in female intercourse as laymen ; and 
say that Peter the Apostle had a wife and children. . . . Beloved, 
we cannot now forcibly compel you to chastity, but we admonish 
you, nevertheless, that ye observe chastity, so as Christ's ministers 
ought, in good reputation, to the pleasure of God." 2 

That these well-meant homilies effected little in reforming the 
hearts of so obdurate a generation becomes manifest by the proceed- 
ings of the council of Enham, held by King Ethelred in 1009. The 
priests are there entreated, by the obedience which they owe to God, 
to observe the chastity which they know to be due. Yet so great 
was the laxity prevailing that some are stated to have two or more 
wives, and many to be in the habit of changing their spouses at 
pleasure, in violation of all Christian law. The council was appar- 
ently, however, powerless to repress these scandals by an adequate 
punishment, and contented itself with promising to those who lived 
chastely the privileges and legal status of nobles, while the vicious 



1 ^Elfrici Canon, c. i.-viii. (Thorpe, 
II. 345). "Quasi periculosum non 
esset sacerdotem vivere more conjugati. 
Sed dicetis eum haud posse carere 
muliebribus servitiis. Kespondeo, quo- 
nam pacto vitam transegerunt sancti 



olim viri absque femina vel uxore," &c. 
(Spelman I. 573). — Spelrnan's MS. was 
defective ; that in Thorpe is perfect. 

2 ^Elfric's Pastoral Epistle, c. 32, 33 
(Thorpe, II. 377). 



DISORDERS OF THE PRIESTHOOD. 



173 



were vaguely threatened with the loss of the grace of God and 



man. 



The injunctions of the council as regards the regular clergy, 
though not particularly specific in their nature, show that even the 
monks had not responded to the benefits conferred upon them by 
Edgar the Pacific, nor fulfilled the expectations of the pious Dunstan. 
An expression employed, indeed, leads the learned Spelman to sug- 
gest that there possibly were two orders of monks, the one married 
and the other unmarried ; but this is probably without foundation. 2 



Such was the condition of the church when the increasing assaults 
of the Northman finally culminated in overthrowing the house of 
Cerdic, and placing the hated Dane upon the throne of England. 
Cnut's long and prosperous reign, and his earnest veneration for the 
church, as shown by his pilgrimage to Rome, may perhaps have 
succeeded in removing some of the grosser immoralities of the clergy, 
but that marriage was still openly and unrestrainedly practised by 
those in orders is evident. The ecclesiastical laws of Cnut exhort 
priests to chastity in precisely the same words, and with the same 
promises as the canons of the council of Enham, but do not allude 



1 Omnes ministros Dei, prsesertim 
sacerdotes, obsecramus et docemus, ut 
Deo obedientes, castitatem colant, et 
contra iram Domini se hoc modo muni- 
ant et tueantur. Certius enim norint 
quod non habeant debite ob aliquam 
coitus causam uxoris consortium. In 
more tamen est, ut quidam duas, qui- 
dam plures habeat ; et nonnullus quam- 
vis earn dimiserit quam nuper babuit, 
aliam tamen, ipsa vivente, accipit, quod 
nulla Christianorum lege est permissum. 
Dimittens autem et castitatem recolens, 
e coelo assequetur misericordiam, in 
mundo etiam venerationem, adeo ut 
juribus et tributis habeatur Tbaini 
dignus cum in vita turn in funere. Qui 
autem ordinis sui regulam abdicaverit, 
omni cum apud Deum turn apud homi- 
nes gratia exuatur. — Concil. iEnham. 
c. 2. (Spelman. I. 514-5). 

I give the translation of Spelman, as 
being more faithful in spirit, although 
less literal than that of Thorpe; for 
though the expression " wifes gemanan' 7 
may not be especially limited to wifely 
relations, yet the whole tenor of the 
passage shows that the women con- 



cerned were not merely concubines, but 
were entitled to the consideration of 
legal wives. 

The thane-right promised to those 
who should reform their lives was one 
of the recognized privileges of the 
church. In a list of wer-gilds, anterior 
to the period under consideration by 
about a century, the wer-gild for the 
priest — " msesse-begnes " is the same as 
that for the secular noble — " woruld- 
>egnes" (Thorpe, I. 187). 

2 " Munecas and mynecena canoni- 
cas and nunnan " (Concil. ^Enham. c. 
1). Spelman thinks that the mynecena 
were perhaps the wives or concubines 
of monks (Concil. I. 530). Mynecen 
is merely the feminine of munuc, a 
monk ; Thorpe translates it as " myn- 
chens," and suggests that the "myne- 
cena" were merely the younger nuns, 
not quite so strictly governed as the 
elder " nunnan." To this opinion Bos- 
worth (Dictionary, s. v. nunne) seems 
to incline. It would appear to be so 
from chapter xv. (be Mynecenan) of 
the "Institutes of Polity" (Thorpe, 
II. 322). 



174 SAXON" ENGLAND. 

to the habit of keeping a plurality of wives; while, in the same 
chapter, a warning to the whole people against unlawful concubinage 
would seem to indicate that clergy and laity were bound by rules 
identical in strictness. 1 

That the rule of celibacy was recognized as only binding on the 
regulars, or monks, and that the secular priesthood were at full 
liberty to marry is evident from the system of purgation enjoined on 
them by the same code. The priest who was also a monk (sacerdos 
regulariter vivens — sacerd >e regollice libbe), could clear himself from 
an accusation in a simple suit by merely saying mass, and taking the 
communion, while the secular priest (plebeius sacerdos — msesse- 
preorst \>e regol-lif nsebbe) is only equal to the deacon-monk (diaconus 
regularis — diacon )>e regollice libbe), requiring two of his peers as 
compurgators. 2 The significance of the distinction thus drawn is 
rendered clear by the version of the passage in a curious Latin text 
of the code published by Kolderup-Rosenvinge. The chapter is 
divided into two, the first one with the rubric "De Sacerdotibus," 
and commencing a Si contigerit presbyterum regulariter et caste 
viventem," &c, while the second is headed "De vulgare sacerdote 
non casto" the meaning of which is defined in the expression " Si 
vulgaris presbyter qui non regulariter vivit." 3 It is thus evident 
that purity was expected from those only who had entered into the 
obligations of monastic life, and also that the reforms of Dunstan 
had caused the ministers of the altar to be frequently selected from 
among the monks. 

To this period are also, in all probability, to be attributed the 
"Institutes of Polity, civil and ecclesiastical," to which reference has 
been made in the preceding section as blaming priests for decorating 



1 Onutes Domas c. vi. (Thorpe, I. cracy. This constitutes the thane-right 
364). j alluded to in the council of Enham, 

* Cnutes Domas c. v. (Thorpe, I. a f + d gained by the laws of Cnut, as 
362). To appreciate the full weight of ! attaching to priests who preserve their 
the privileges thus distributed, weshould j fiastity. ^ "sacramentum presby- 
bearin mind how completely, in those , tei ? regulariter vivent* tantumdem 
times, the various classes of society I ™ leat " cut , nberalis homims' '(Cnuti 
were distinguished bv the facilities af- ^ Ssecul. c 128-ed. Koiaerup- 
forded them of acquittal in cases of ac- i -Rosenyinge)-the expression "liberal* 
cusation, and by the graduated scale of j }° mo u ^uig *n th« version, used for 
fines established Lfor injuries inflicted on | ^ e "taynus" or thane of the other 
them. These were most substantial j 

advantages when the wer-gild, or blood- 3 Cnuti Leg. Eccles. c. 8, 9. (Kol- 
money, was the only safeguard guaran- j derup-Kosenvinge, HauniEe, 1826, p. 
teed by law for life and limb, and were I 12). 
most important privileges of the aristo- 



SACERDOTAL MARRIAGE ESTABLISHED. 175 

their wives with the ornaments belonging to their churches. Unable 
to denounce efficient penalties for the prevention of such evil prac- 
tices, the author is obliged to content himself with invoking future 
punishment from heaven, in vague and meaningless threats 
— "A priest's wife is nothing but a snare of the devil, and he who 
is ensnared thereby on to his end, he will be seized fast by the 
devil." 1 

From all this it is evident that the memory of the ancient canons 
was not forgotten, and that their observance was still urged by some 
ardent churchmen, but that the customs of the period had rendered 
them virtually obsolete, and that no sufficient means existed of en- 
forcing obedience. If open scandals and shameless bigamy and 
concubinage could be restrained, the ecclesiastical authorities were 
evidently content. Celibacy could not be enjoined as a law, but 
was rendered attractive by surrounding it with privileges and immu- 
nities denied to him who yielded to the temptations of the flesh, and 
who thus in some degree assimilated his sacred character to that of 
the laity. 

The Saxon church thus was practically regardless of the rule of 
celibacy when Edward the Confessor ascended the throne. The 
ascetic piety of that prince and his Norman education alike led him 
to abhor the sensual indulgences in which he found his subjects 
plunged, and he attached himself almost exclusively to the horde of 
Norman monks who flocked to his court from across the Channel. 
Their influence was all-powerful, and though reasons of the highest 
state necessity forced him to ally himself in marriage with Edith, 
daughter of the puissant Duke Godwin, whom Edward hated with 
all the energy of his feeble nature, it was not difficult for his artful 
ghostly counsellors to persuade him that a vow of virginity, taken 
and kept amid the seductions of a throne, would insure his glory in 
this world and his salvation in the next. A minstrel historian de- 
scribes at length the engagement of perpetual chastity entered into 
between Edward and Edith at their marriage, and though he mentions 
the popular derision to which this exposed the royal monk at the 



1 Institutes of Polity, &c, c. 16, 19, I are used interchangeably to denote the 
23 (Thorpe, II. 325, 329, 337). It is consorts of priests, 
observable that the words wif and cwene \ 



176 



SAXON ENGLAND 



hands of a gross and brutal generation, he is firmly persuaded that 
the crown of martyrdom was worthily won and worn — 



Par veincre charnel desir, 
Bein deit estre clamez martir. 
Ne sai cunter en mil estoire 
Rei ki feist si grant victoire, 
Sa char, diable e mund venqui, 
Ki sont troi fort enimi. 1 



How little the royal pair expected this example to be followed and 
how relaxed were all the rules of monastic discipline is shown by an 
anecdote of the period. The austere Gervinus, Abbot of St. Biquier 
in Ponthieu was always welcomed by them when he visited England, 
and on one occasion Queen Edith offered to kiss him. The Abbot's 
rigidity overcame his courtliness and he refused the royal salutation, 
to the great indignation of the Queen, who ordered certain gifts 
which she had set apart for him to be withdrawn. Edward, however, 
approved of the action of the monk, and after Edith had been made 
to understand his motives she not only joined in applauding him but 
demanded that a similar rule should be made imperative on all the 
monks of England. 2 

It cannot be doubted that Edward made efforts to effect a reform 
among his sensual and self-indulgent subjects, but his want of success 
is developed in the description of the Saxon clergy at the time of the 
Conquest. The Norman chroniclers speak of them as abandoned to 
sloth, ignorance, and the lusts of the flesh; even monastic institu- 
tions were matters rather of tradition than of actual existence, and 
the monks themselves were hardly distinguishable by their mode of 
life from the laity. 3 There doubtless may be some contemptuous ex- 
aggeration in this, and yet one author of the period, who is wholly 



1 Lives of Edward the Confessor, pp. 
60-1 (Chron. & Memor. of Gr. Brit.). 
In the same curious collection there is 
another life of Edward by a follower 
of Queen Edith and dedicated to her, 
the writer of which freely attributes 
the worst motives to the intrigues of 
the Norman monks in separating her 
from the king. See, for instance, his 
account of her immurement in the 
abbey of Wilton (Op. cit. p. 403). 

Edward's virginity is likewise at- 
tested by the MS. Monast. Bamesiens. 
(Spelman. I. 637) — " Ccelibem pudi- 
citise florem, quern inter regni delicias 



et inter amplexus conjugales . . . con- 
servarat, virtutemque perpetuo floribus 
immiscuit paradisi." In this, however, 
Edward only imitated the asceticism 
ascribed to the Emperor St. Henry II. 
and his Empress St. Cunegunda, half a 
century earlier. 

2 Chron. Centulens. Lib. iv. c. jxxii. 
(D'Achery II. 345). 

3 Orderic. Vital. P. n. Lib. iv. c. 10. 
— The testimony of William of Mal- 
mesbury (De Gest. Begum Lib. in.) is 
equally emphatic. 



EDWAKD THE CONFESSOK. 177 

Saxon in his feelings, does not hesitate to attribute the ruin of the 
Saxon monarchy and the devastation of the kingdom to the just 
wrath of God, provoked by the vices of the clergy. 1 

The rule of the Normans removed England from her isolation. 
Brought into the commonwealth of Christendom and under the active 
supremacy of the Holy See, her history henceforth becomes more 
closely connected with the general ecclesiastical movement which 
received its irresistible impulsion about this period. That movement 
it is now our business to examine. 



Lives of Edward the Confessor, p. 432. 



12 



XII. 
PETER DAMIANI 



In a previous section I have shown the laxity prevailing through- 
out Continental Europe at the commencement of the eleventh century. 
It is not to be supposed, however, that even where this was tacitly 
permitted, it was openly and unreservedly authorized. The per- 
versity of a sinful generation might render impossible the enforce- 
ment of the ancient canons ; they might even be forgotten by the 
worldly and unthinking ; but they were still the law of the church, 
and their authority was still admitted by some ardent devotees who 
longed to restore the purity of earlier ages. Burckhardt, who was 
Bishop of Worms from the year 1000 to 1025, in his voluminous 
collection of canons, gives a fair selection from the councils and 
decretals prohibiting all female intercourse to the clergy. 1 Benedict 
VIII. and the Emperor St. Henry II. — whose admiration of vir- 
ginity was evinced by the personal sacrifice to which reference has 
just been made — in 1022 endeavored in the most solemn manner to 
reform the universal laxity. At the synod of Pavia a series of canons 
was adopted pronouncing sentence of deposition upon all priests, 
deacons, and subdeacons having wives or concubines, and upon all 
bishops keeping women near them, while special stress was laid upon 
the continued servitude of the children of all such ecclesiastics as 
were serfs of the church. 2 These canons, signed by the pope and 
attendant bishops, were laid before the emperor, who indorsed them 
with his sanction, declared them to be municipal as well as ecclesi- 
astical law, promised that their observance should be enforced by the 
civil magistrates, and thanked Benedict and his prelates for their 
vigilance in seeking a remedy for the incontinence of the clergy, the 
evils whereof swept like a storm over the face of Christendom. 3 

1 Burchardi Decret. Lib. in. c. 108-116. 

2 Synod. Ticinens. ann. 1022 c. 1, 2, 3, 4. 

3 Respons Imperatoris in Synod. Ticinens. 



DEBASEMENT OF THE PAPACY. 179 

In France, the long reign of Robert the Pious seems to have been 
marked with almost entire indifference to the subject, but the acces- 
sion of his son Henry I. was attended with a strenuous effort to effect 
a reform. The council of Bourges, held in November, 1031, but 
four months after the death of Robert, may perhaps have been 
assembled at the request of the dying monarch, desirous of redeem- 
ing his own sins with the vicarious penance of his subjects. It 
addressed itself vigorously to eradicating the evil by a comprehensive 
series of measures, admirably adapted to the end in view. Priests, 
deacons, and subdeacons were forbidden to have wives or concubines, 
and all such consorts were ordered to be dismissed at once and forever. 
Those who refused obedience were to be degraded to the rank of 
lectors or chanters, and in future no ecclesiastic was to be permitted 
to take either wife or concubine. A vow of chastity was commanded 
as a necessary prerequisite to assuming the subdiaconate, and no 
bishop was to ordain a candidate without exacting from him a promise 
to take neither wife nor concubine. Children of the clergy in orders, 
born during the ministry of their parents, were pronounced incapable 
of entering the church, in justification of which was cited the pro- 
vision of the municipal law which incapacitated illegitimates from 
receiving inheritance or bearing witness in court; but those who 
were born after their fathers had been reduced to the condition of 
laymen were not to be considered as the children of ecclesiastics. 1 

Nothing could be more reasonable than all this, considered from 
the high-church stand-point, and nothing better adapted to effect the 
object in view. All that was wanting was the enforcement of the 
legislation — and laws, when opposed to the spirit of the age, are not 
apt to be enforced. How much was really gained by the united 
efforts of the pope, the emperor, and the Gallican hierarchy can 
readily be gathered from a few out of innumerable incidents afforded 
by the history of the period. 

The able and energetic, though unscrupulous, Benedict VIII. was 
no more, and the great House of Tusculum, which ruled the Eternal 
City, had filled the chair of St. Peter with a worthless scion of their 
stock, as though to declare their contempt for the lofty pretensions 
of the Apostolic Episcopate. A fit descendant of the infamous 
Marozia and Alberic, Benedict IX., a child of ten years old at the 
time of his elevation in 1032, grew up in unrestrained license, and 



Concil. Bituricens. arm. 1031 c. 5, 6, 8, 10. 



180 



PETEE DAMIANI. 



shocked even the dull sensibilities of a gross and barbarous age by 
the scandals of his daily life. 1 The popular appreciation of his 
character is shown by the legend of his appearing after death to a 
holy man, in the figure of a bear, with the ears and tail of an ass, 
and declaring that, as he had lived in bestiality, so he was destined 
to wear the form of a beast and to suffer fiery torments until the 
Day of Judgment, after which he was to be plunged, body and soul, 
into the fathomless pit of hell. 2 " When the Vicegerent of God, the 
head of the Christian church, was thus utterly depraved, the pros- 
pect of reforming the corruption of the clergy was not promising, 
and the good work was not likely to be prosecuted with vigor. 

Nor were the members of the hierarchy unworthy of their superior. 
We hear of Rainbaldo, Bishop of Fiesole, who, not contented with 
numerous concubines, had publicly married a wife, and whose chil- 
dren were established as a wide-spread and powerful family — and, 
what is perhaps more remarkable, this dissolute prelate was gifted 
with the power of working miracles. 3 The bishops, indeed, at this 
period, were still rather warrior nobles than Christian ministers. 
Bisantio, the good Bishop of Bari, is praised quite as much for his 
terrible prowess in battle as for his pious benevolence and munifi- 
cence ; and on his death, in 1035, his flock chose a military ofiicial 
as his successor. 4 

Descending in the scale, we may instance the priest Marino, who, 
though he lived openly with his wife, was a noted miracle-worker. 
Among quaint wonders wrought by him it is recorded that water 
rendered holy by his blessing, when sprinkled over the cornfields, 
had the power of driving away all caterpillars and other noxious 
insects. His child, Eleuchadio, was a most venerable man, who sub- 
sequently, as abbot of the monastery of the Virgin at Fiano, won 
the esteem and respect of even the stern Damiani himself. 5 In fact, 
the pious Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Casino, better known as pope 
under the name of Victor III., declares that throughout Italy, under 



1 Quoniam infelicem habuit introi- 
tum, infeliciorem persensit exitum. 
Horrendum quippe referri turpitudo 
illius conversationis et vitse. — Kad. 
Glabri Lib. y. c. 5. 

2 Johann. Cbron. Angliae, c. 47 
(Ludewig Rel. Msctorum. XII. 145). 
Semper enim luxurise- et carnalibus 
illecebris deditus fuit. 



3 P. Damiani Opusc. vi. c. 18. 

4 Annal. Barenses, ann. 1035. — 
Shortly after this, we hear of two 
bishops killed in battle (Ibid. ann. 
1041). 

5 P. Damiani, loc. cit. 



LICENSE ASSUMED BY THE CLERGY. 181 

the pontificate of Benedict, all orders, from bishops down, without 
shame or concealment, were publicly married and lived with their 
wives as laymen, leaving their children fully provided for in their 
wills; and what rendered the disgrace more poignant was the fact 
that the scandal was greatest in Rome itself, whence the light of 
religion and discipline had formerly illuminated the Christian world. 1 
Another contemporary writer asserts that this laxity prevailed 
throughout the whole of Latin Christendom, sacerdotal marriage 
being everywhere so common that it was no longer punished as 
unlawful, and scarcely even reprehended. 2 

In becoming thus universal and tacitly permitted it was not in- 
compatible with the most fervent piety; and though it may be an 
evidence of hierarchical disorganization, it can no longer be considered 
as indicating of itself a lowered standard of morals in the ministers 
of the church. This is forcibly illustrated in the case of St. Proco- 
pius, selected by Duke Ulric of Bohemia as the first abbot of the 
monastery of Zagow. He was regularly bred to the church under 
the care of Bishop Quirillus, and was noted for the rectitude of his 
deportment in the priesthood; yet we learn that he was married 
during this period, when we are told that, on being disgusted with 
the hollow vanities of the world, he abandoned wife and friends for 
the solitude of a hermit's cave. Here an accidental meeting with 
Duke Ulric, while hunting, led to the foundation of Zagow and to 
the installation of Procopius as its head. 3 

Silently the church seemed to acquiesce in the violation of her 
canons, until, at length, she appeared content if her ministers would 
satisfy themselves with reputable marriage and avoid the grosser 
scandals. When Ulric, Abbot of Tegernsee, about 1041, deplored 
the evil influence of a priest who had two wives living, he seems to 
have felt that lawful marriage might be tolerated, but that polygamy 
was of evil example in a Christian pastor. 4 So when Albert the 
Magnificent, Archbishop of Hamburg, was accustomed to exhort his 



1 Desiderii Dialog, de Mirac. S. Bene- 
dict. Lib. in. (Script. Eer. Italicor. V. 



2 John, a disciple of St. Peter Da- 
miani, in alluding to the prevailing 
twin vices of simony and marriage, 
says: "Quae videlicet pestes tarn per- 
niciosa consuetudine prsevaluerant, tam- 
que impune totam ferme ecclesiam in 



omni Romano orbe fredaverant, ut vix 
jam reprehensorem, tamquam licite, 
formidarent. " — Yit. S. P. Damiani c. 
16. 

3 Cosmse Pragens. Chron. Boem. Lib. 
in. (Mencken. Script. Rer. German. 
III. p. 1782). 

4 Batthyani Leg. Eccles. Hung. I. 
335. 



182 



PETER DAMIANI. 



clergy to continence and to shun the pestiferous society of women, 
his worldly wisdom prompted him to add that, if they were unequal 
to the effort, they should at least keep unsullied the bonds of mar- 
riage and should live "si non caste, tarn en caute." 1 

If irregularities such as these existed, they are not justly imputable 
to the church itself. It can scarcely be a matter of wonder if the 
clergy, in assimilating themselves to the laity as regards the liberty 
of wedlock, should also have adopted the license which in that law- 
less age rendered the marriage-tie a slender protection for the weak- 
ness of woman. Though it was indissoluble according to the teachings 
of religion, yet the church, which at that time was the only protector 
of the feeble against the strong, had not acquired the commanding 
authority which subsequently enabled it to enforce its decrees every- 
where and on all occasions. If, under a vigorous pope, the sentence 
of excommunication had been able to frighten a superstitious monarch 
like Robert the Pious, yet the pontiffs of the House of Tusculum 
were not men to trouble themselves, or to be successful had they 
made the attempt, to rectify the wrongs perpetrated in every obscure 
baronial castle or petty hamlet in Europe. The isolation and inde- 
pendence of the feudal system made every freeman, so to speak, the 
arbiter of his own actions. The wife whose charms ceased to gratify 
the senses of her husband, or whose temper threatened to disturb his 
equanimity, stood little chance of retaining her position, if an 
opportunity offered of replacing her to advantage, unless she was 
fortunate in having kindred able to resent the wrong which the church 
and the law were powerless to prevent or to punish. 2 If, then, the 
clergy occasionally indulged in similar practices, the evil is not 
attributable to the license of marriage which they had usurped. 
That license had, at all events, borne some fruits of good, for, 
during its existence, we hear somewhat less of the system of concu- 
binage so prevalent before and after this period, and there is no 
authentic indication of the nameless horrors so suggestively intimated 



1 Adam. Bremens. Gest. Pontif. Ham- 
maburg. Schol. ad cap. 29 Lib. in. 

2 Perhaps as suggestive an illustration 
of the morals and manners of the age 
as can well be given is afforded by a 
deed executed in 1055 by a noble count 
of Catalonia on the occasion of his 
marriage. He pledges himself not to 



cast off his bride, except for infidelity 
— such infidelity not being plotted for 
by him — and to secure the performance 
of this promise he places in the hands 
of his father-in-law four castles, to be 
held in pledge, subject to forfeiture in 
case of his violating the agreement. 
(Baluz. Capit. Francor. Append. Actor. 
Vet. No. 148.) 



SAN GIOVANNI GUALBERTO. 183 

by the restrictions on the residence of relatives enjoined in the fre- 
quent canons promulgated at the close of the ninth century. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the race of ascetics was 
extinct. Amid the license which prevailed in every class, there were 
still some men who, disgusted with the turbulent and dissolute world, 
despairing of salvation among the temptations and trials of active 
life or the sloth and luxury of the monastic establishments, sought 
the path to heaven in solitude and maceration. Such men could not 
but look with detestation on the worldly priests who divided their 
thoughts between their sacred calling and the cares of an increasing 
household, and who profaned the unutterable mysteries of the altar 
with hearts and hands not kept pure from the lusts of the flesh. 

Prominent among these holy anchorites was S. Giovanni Gual- 
berto, who fled from the snares of the world to the forests of Camal- 
doli, where his austerities, his holiness, and his miracles soon attracted 
crowds of disciples, who formed a numerous community of humble 
imitators of his virtues. Restoring in its strictness the neglected 
Rule of Benedict, his example and his teaching wrought conviction, 
and the order of monks which he founded and carried with him to 
the peaceful shades of Vallombrosa became renowned for its sanctity 
and purity. Thus withdrawn by the will of heaven from the selfish 
egotism of a hermit's existence, he labored earnestly to reform the 
laxity of priestly life in general, and his success was most encourag- 
ing. Moved by his admonitions, self-indulgent clerks abandoned 
wives and mistresses, devoted themselves to the performance of their 
sacred functions, or sought in monastic seclusion to make atonement 
for their past excesses. 1 

Though it may well be supposed that Gualberto was not unas- 
sisted in his efforts, yet all such individual exertions, dependent upon 
persuasion alone, could be but limited in their influence and tem- 
porary in their results. Reform, to be universal and permanent, 
required to be authoritative in its character and to proceed from 
above downward. The papacy itself must cease to be a scandal to 
Christendom, and must be prepared to wield the awful force of 
its authority, seconded by the moral weight of its example, before 
disorders so firmly rooted could be attacked with any hope of success. 
In 1044, Benedict IX. was driven out of Rome by a faction of 
rebels or patriots, who elected Silvester III. as pontiff in his place. 



1 Atton. Vit. S. Johannis Gualbert. c. 31. 



184 



PETER DAMIANI. 



A sudden revolution sent Silvester into exile, and brought Benedict 
back, who, to complete the confusion, sold the papal dignity to a new 
aspirant, known as Gregory VI. The transaction was not one which 
could decently be recognized by the church, and Benedict was held 
incapable of thus transferring the allegiance of Christendom or of 
depriving himself of his position. There were thus three popes, 
whose conflicting claims to reverence threw all Europe into the doubt 
and danger of schism, nor could the knotty question be solved by the 
power of distracted Italy. A more potent judge was required, and 
the decision was referred, as a matter of course, to the sagacious and 
energetic Emperor, Henry the Black, whose success in repressing the 
turbulence of the empire, and whose sincere reverence for the church 
gave reasonable promise of a happy solution of the tangled problem. 1 
His proceeding was summary. The three competitors were uncere- 
moniously dismissed, and Henry filled the vacancy thus created by 
the appointment of Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg, who assumed the 
name of Clement II. 

Henry III. was moved by a profound conviction that a thorough 
and searching reform was vitally necessary to the church. The con- 
scientious severity of his character led him to have little toleration 
for the abuses and disorders which were everywhere so painfully 
apparent. How far his views were in advance of those generally 
entertained, even by ecclesiastical dignitaries, was clearly manifested 
as early as 1042, when Gebhardt, Bishop of Ratisbon, urged the 
claims of his favorite arch-priest Cuno for the vacant see of Eichstedt. 
Henry refused on the ground that Cuno was the son of a priest, and 
therefore by the established canons ineligible to the position. The 
reason, though unanswerable, was so novel that Gebhardt refused to 
accept it as the true one, and Henry, to pacify him, promised to 
nominate any other one of the Batisbon clergy whom Gebhardt 
might select. The choice fell upon a young and unknown man, also 
named Gebhardt, whose abilities, brought into notice thus accidentally, 
rendered him afterwards more conspicuous as Pope Victor II. 2 



1 The popular feelings which greeted 
his interposition are well conveyed in 
the jingling verse addressed to him by 
a holy hermit — 

Una Sunamitis nupsit tribus maritis; 

Rex Henrice, Omnipotentis vice, 

Solve connubium, triforme, dubiuin. 

(Annalista Saxo, ann. 1046.) 

The invitation to interfere, however, 



was not needed. Henry's prerogative as 
the representative of Charlemagne and 
Otho the Great was sufficient warrant, 
and his religious ardor an ample mo- 
tive, without any special reference to 
his tribunal. 



2 Anon, de Episcop. Eichstett. c. 
(Patrolog. T. 146, pp. 1021-2). 



34 



HIS EARLY CAREER 



185 



Henry did not neglect the opportunity now afforded him of carry- 
ing into effect his reformatory views, and in his selection of a pontiff 
he was apparently influenced by the conviction that the Italian clergy 
were too hopelessly corrupt for him to expect from them assistance 
in his plans. Clement exchanged with him promises of mutual sup- 
port in the arduous undertaking. We have nothing to do with the 
most crying evil; the one first vigorously attacked, and the one 
which was productive of the greatest real detriment to the church — 
simony. That was everywhere open and avowed. From the bless- 
ing of the priest to the nomination for a primacy, every ecclesiastical 
act was the subject of bargain and sale, reduced in many places to a 
regular scale of prices. 1 To remove this scandal, Clement set 
vigorously to work, and soon found an united opposition which 
promised little for the success of the undertaking. He was doubtless 
sincere, but he was clearly alone in his struggle with the fierce 
Italian prelates, who were resolved not to abandon the emoluments 
and indulgences to which they had grown accustomed, and the result 
of his efforts did not fulfil the expectations of the more sanguine 
aspirants for the purification of the church. Even his patron the 
emperor appears to have doubted his earnestness in the cause, for we 
find Henry not only addressing him a letter urging him to fresh ex- 
ertion, but intrusting it to Peter Damiani, with a command to present 
it in person, and to use all his powers of exhortation to stimulate the 
flagging zeal of the pope. Damiani refused to leave his hermitage 
even at the imperial mandate, but he enclosed the missive in one of 
his own, deploring the unhealed wounds of the church, recapitulating 
the shortcomings of Clement, and goading him to fresh efforts, in a 
style which savored little of the reverence due to the Vicegerent of 
God. 2 The pontifical crown was evidently not a wreath of roses. 
Clement sank under its weight, and died October 9th, 1047, in less 
than ten months after he had accepted the perilous dignity. 

St. Peter Damiani, who thus introduces himself to our notice, was 
one of the remarkable men of the epoch. Born about the year 988 at 
Ravenna, of a noble but decayed family, and the last of a numerous 



1 It would be a work of supereroga- 
tion to quote the innumerable evidences 
of this which crowd the pages of con- 
temporary writers. The generalizing 
remark of Glaber will suffice — "Omnes 
quippe gradus ecclesiastici a maximo 



pontifice usque ad hostianum opprimun- 
tur per suae damnationis precium, ac 
juxta vocem Dominicam in cunctis 
grassatur spiritale latrocinium. " — Glab. 
Rodolph. Hist. Lib. v. c. 5. 

2 Damiani Lib. viii. Epist. 3. 



186 PETER DAMIANI. 

progeny, lie owed his life to a woman of the very class to the extirpa- 
tion of which he devoted all the energies of his prime. His mother, 
worn out in the struggle with poverty, regarded his birth with aver- 
sion, refused to suckle the infant saint, and neglected him until his 
forlorn and emaciated condition awoke the compassion of a female 
retainer, the wife of a priest, who remonstrated with the unfeeling 
parent until she succeeded in arousing the sense of duty and restored 
to existence the little sufferer, who was destined to bring unnumbered 
woes to all who were of her condition. 1 His early years are said to 
have been passed as a swineherd, till the opportunity for instruction 
offered itself, which he eagerly embraced. Retiring at length from 
the world, he joined the disciples of St. Romuald, who practised the 
strictest monastic life, either as monks or hermits, at Avellana, near 
Agubio. Immuring himself there in the desert, his austerities soon 
gained for him the reputation of preeminent sanctity, and led to his 
election as prior of the brotherhood. Gifted by nature with an intel- 
lect of unusual strength, informed with all the learning of the day, 
his stern asceticism, his dauntless spirit, and the uncompromising 
force of his zeal brought him into notice and marked him as a fitting 
instrument in the cause of reform. Occasionally, at the call of his 
superiors, he left his beloved retreat to do battle with the hosts of 
evil, returning with renewed zest to the charms of solitude, until, in 
1057, Stephen IX. forced him to accept the cardinalate and bishopric 
of Ostia — the highest dignity in the Roman court. The duties' of 
his episcopate, however, conflicted with his monastic fervor, and after 
a few years he rendered up the pastoral ring and staff and again 
returned to Avellana, where he died in 1072, full of years and 
honors. His position and authority can best be estimated from 
the terms employed by Alexander II., who, when sending him on 
an important mission to France, described him as next in influence 
to himself in the Roman church, and the chief support of the Holy 
See. 2 

With a nature ardent and combative, worked up to the highest 
pitch of ascetic intolerance by the introspective musings of his cell, 
it may readily be conceived that the corruptions of the church filled 
him with warm indignation and fierce desire to restore it to its pris- 
tine purity. To this holy cause he devoted the last half of his life, 

1 Johannis Vit. B. P. Damiani c. 1. 

2 Alex. II. Epist. 15. 



LEO IX. AND DAMIANI. 



187 



and was always ready, with tongue and pen, at the sacrifice of his 
dearly prized solitude, to further the great movement on which he 
felt that the future of Christianity depended. The brief hopes ex- 
cited by the promises of Clement and Henry were speedily quenched 
by the untimely death of the German pontiff, and the most sanguine 
might well despair at seeing the odious Benedict IX. reinstated as 
pope. But the emperor was in earnest, and listened willingly to the 
cry of those who besought him not to leave his good work unfinished. 
Nine brief months saw Benedict again a wanderer, and another 
German prelate installed in his place. Poppo of Brixen, however, 
enjoyed his new dignity, as Damasus II., but twenty-one days, when 
he fell a martyr to the cause, perishing miserably, either through 
the insalubrious heats of a Roman summer, or the hidden vindictive- 
ness of Italian party rage. It required some courage to accept the 
honorable but fatal post, and six months elapsed ere a worthy candi- 
date could be found. Henry's choice this time fell upon Bruno of 
Toul, a prelate to whom admiring biographers ascribe every virtue 
and every qualification. As Leo IX. he ascended the pontifical 
throne in February, 1049, and he soon gave ample evidence of the 
sincerity with which he intended to carry out the views of the puri- 
tans whom he represented. 

It was significant that he took with him to Rome the monk Hilde- 
brand, lately released from the service of his master Gregory VI., 
who had died in his German exile, restored by a miracle at his death 
to the honors of which he had been adjudged unworthy while living. 1 
Still more significant was the fact that Leo entered Rome, not as 
pope, but as a barefooted pilgrim, and that he required the empty 
formality of an election within the city, as though the nomination of 
the emperor had given him no claim to his high office. Whether this 
was the result of a voice from heaven, as related by the papal histo- 
rians, 2 or whether it was done at the suggestion of the high-church- 
man Hildebrand, it showed that the new pontiff magnified his office, 
and felt that the line of distinction between the clerk and the layman 
was to be sharply drawn and vigorously defended. 



1 Learning, on his death-bed, that he 
was not to be buried as a pope, he re- 
quested the prelates around him to place 
his coffin at the church-door securely 
fastened, and if the portals opened 
without human hands, it would be a 



sign that he should receive papal honors. 
It was done, when a gust of wind burst 
open the door and lifted the coffin 
from the bier (Martin. Fuldens. Chron. 
ann. 1046). 

2 Martin. Fuldens. ann. 1050. 



188 



PETER DAMIANI. 



Damiani lost no time in stimulating the stranger to the duties 
expected of him by the party of reform. From the retreat of Avel- 
lana he addressed to Leo an essay, which is the saddest of all the 
sad monuments bequeathed to us by that age of desolation. With 
cynical boldness he develops the frightful excesses epidemically preva- 
lent among the cloistered crowds of men, attributable to the unnatural 
restraints imposed upon the passions of those unfitted by nature or 
by training to control themselves ; and his laborious efforts to demon- 
strate the propriety of punishing the guilty by degradation show how 
hideous was the laxity of morals which was disposed to regard such 
crimes with indulgence. 1 Like the nameless horrors of the Peniten- 
tials, it is the most convincing commentary on the system which 
sought to enforce an impossible exaltation of purity on the ministers 
of a religion whose outward formalism had absorbed its internal life. 2 

Leo IX. was not long in manifesting his intentions, and his first 
point of attack was chosen with some skill, the ecclesiastical rank of 
the victim and his want of power rendering him at once a striking 
example and an easy sacrifice. Dabralis, Archbishop of Salona (or 
Spalatro) in Dalmatia, was married and lived openly with his wife. 
Leo sent a legate to investigate and punish. Called before a synod, 
Dabralis could not or deigned not to deny his guilt, but boldly justi- 
fied it, as the woman was his lawful wife, and he instanced the cus- 
toms of the Greek church in his defence. This only aggravated his 
guilt, and he was promptly degraded forever. 3 



1 Damiani Opusc. vil. (Liber Go- 
morrhianus). — Some ten or twelve years 
later, Alexander II. obtained the manu- 
script from Damiani, under pretence of 
having it copied, but prudently locked 
it up and refused to return it. The 
saintly author complained bitterly of 
the deception thus practised upon him, 
which he unceremoniously characterized 
as a fraud (Damiani Lib. II. Epist. 6). 

2 The world can never know the long 
and silent suffering endured in the ter- 
rible self-combat of ardent natures in 
the solitude of the cloister. If many 
succumb, the indignation which Da- 
miani and his class so freely bestow on 
the victims should be transferred rather 
to the system which produces them. 
A monk of the period has left us a vivid 
and curious picture of his own tortures 
in the endless struggle with the tempter ; 
and the mental torments to which his 
fellow-unfortunates were exposed are 



aptly condensed in the simple tale of 
the Abbess Sarah, who for thirteen long 
years maintained her ground without 
shrinking from the ceaseless assaults of 
the enemy by continually invoking the 
aid of God — ' ' Da mihi fortitudinem 
Deus!" (Othlon. de Tentat. suis P. I.). 
The hagiology of the church is full 
of legends, more or less veritable, of 
the sufferings of these martyrs and of 
their triumphs over the flesh, from the 
time of St. Ammonius, who, when less 
decisive measures failed, bored his flesh 
in many places with red-hot iron, and 
thus vanquished passion by suffering. 
A collection of these stories, more 
curious than decent, may be found 
admiringly detailed by Giraldus Cam- 
brensis in his Gemma Ecclesiastica, 
Dist. II. 

3 Batthyani Leg. Eccles. Hung. I. 
401. 



REFORMATION COMMENCED 



189 



Leaving, for a time, the Italian church for subsequent efforts at 
reformation, Leo undertook a progress throughout Northern Europe, 
for the purpose of restoring the neglected discipline of those regions. 
Before the year of his installation had expired, in November, 1049, 
we find him presiding with the emperor at a council in Mainz, where 
the simony and marriage of the clergy were condemned under severe 
penalties. 1 That the influence thus brought to bear had some effect, 
at least in externals, is shown by the courtly Albert of Hamburg, 
who, on returning from the council to his see, revived a forgotten 
regulation of his predecessors, by virtue of which the women of 
ecclesiastics were ordered to live outside of the towns, in order to 
avoid public scandal. 2 A few weeks before, in France, Leo had pre- 
sided over a national council at Rheims, where his vigorous action 
against simony caused numerous vacancies in the hierarchy. The 
records and canons of this council contain no allusions to the subject 
of marriage or concubinage, but it is altogether improbable that they 
escaped attention, for they were indulged in without concealment by 
all classes of ecclesiastics, and some subsequent writers assert that 
they were rigorously prohibited by the council, but that the injunc- 
tions promulgated were unavailing. 3 

Returning to the South, the Easter of 1051 beheld a council 
assembled at Rome for the purpose of restoring discipline. Appar- 
ently, the Italian prelates were disposed to exercise considerable 
caution in furthering the wishes of their chief, for they abstained 
from visiting their indignation on the guilty priests, and directed 
their penalties against the unfortunate females. In the city itself 
these were declared to be enslaved, and were bestowed on the cathe- 
dral church of the Lateran, while all bishops throughout Christen- 
dom were desired to apply the rule to their own dioceses, and to seize 



1 Adami Bremens. Gest. Pontif. 
Hammaburg. Lib. in. c. 29. — Annalista 



2 Adam. Bremens. loc. cit. 

3 Tunc quippe in Neustria, post ad- 
ventum Normannorum, in tantum dis- 
soluta erat castitas clericorum, ut non 
solum presbyteri sed etiam prsesules 
libere uterentur toris concubinarum, et 
palam superbirent multiplici propagine 
filiorum ac filiarum. . . Tandem . . . 
Leo Papa ... in Gallias A. D. 1049 
venit. . . Tunc ibidem (Remis) gener- 
ate concilium tenuit, et inter reliqua 



eeclesiae commoda quse instituit, pres- 
byteris arma ferre et conjuges habere 
prohibuit. Arma quidem ferre presby- 
teri jam gratanter desiere, sed a pellicibus 
adhuc nolunt abstinere, nee pudicitise 
inhserere. — Orderic. Vital. P. n. Lib. 
V. c. 15. — This portion of the work of 
Ordericus was written about the year 
1125. 

Ibi vero simoniaci, tarn populares 
quam clerici, presbyterique uxorati, 
persuasione sancti Hugonis, a catho- 
licorum communione et ab ecclesiis 
eliminati sunt. — Alberic. Trium Fon- 
tium Chron. ann. 1049. 



190 



PETER DAMIANI. 



the offending women for the benefit of their churches. 1 The atrocity 
of this legislation against the wives of priests is all the more note- 
worthy when contrasted with the tenderness shown to worse crimes 
committed by men whose high position only rendered their guilt the 
more heinous. At this council, Gregory, Bishop of Vercelli, was 
convicted of what, by the rules of the church, was considered as 
incest — an amour with a widow betrothed to his uncle. For this 
aggravated offence he was merely excommunicated, and when, soon 
after, he presented himself in Rome, he was restored to communion 
on his simple promise to perform adequate penance. 2 

The reformatory zeal of Leo and of the monastic followers of 
Damiani was thus evidently not seconded by the Italian church. A 
still more striking proof of this was afforded by the attempt to hold 
a council at Mantua early in 1053. The prelates who dreaded the 
result conspired to break it up. A riot was provoked between their 
retainers and the papal domestics ; the latter, taken unawares and 
speedily overpowered, fled to the council-chamber for safety, and Leo, 
rushing to the door to protect them, was in imminent danger from 
the arrows and stones which hurtled thickly around him. 3 The 
reckless plot succeeded, and the council dispersed in undignified 
haste. Whether Leo was disgusted with his want of success and 
convinced of the impracticability of the undertaking, or whether his 
attention was thenceforth absorbed by his unlucky military operations 
against the rapidly augmenting Norman power in Southern Italy, it is 
not easy now to ascertain : suffice it to say that no further indications 
remain of any endeavor to carry out the reforms so eagerly commenced 
in the first ardor of his pontificate. The consistent Damiani opposed 
the warlike aspirations of the pontiff, but Leo persisted in leading 
his armies himself. A lost battle threw Leo into the power of the 
hated Normans, when, after nine months, he returned to Rome to 
die, in April, 1054, and to be reverenced as a saint after death by 
those who had withstood him during life in every possible manner. 4 

It is not easy to repress a smile on seeing Leo, who had been so 



1 Damiani Opusc. xvm. Diss. ii. c. 

7. — It was probably some vague recol- 
lection of this provision, combined with 
the regulations adopted at Pavia in 
1022 (p. 178) that led Dr. Martin, one 
of the commissioners who presided at 
the trial of Archbishop Cranmer, to de- 
clare to that unhappy culprit that "bis 
cbildren were bondmen to the see of 



Canterbury." — Strype, Memorials of 
Cranmer, Book III. chap. 27. 

2 Herman. Contract. Chron. ann. 
1051. 

3 Muratori Annali, ann. 1053. 

4 S. Leonis PP. IX. Mirac. (Mig- 
ne's Patrolog. CXLIII. 525 sqq.) 



RESISTANCE OF THE CLERGY. 191 

utterly unable to enforce the canons of the Latin church at home, 
seriously undertaking to procure their adoption in Constantinople. 
From his prison, in January, 1054, he sent Cardinal Humbert of 
Silva Candida on a mission to convert the Greek church. There is 
extant a controversy between the legate and Nicetas Pectoratus, a 
learned Greek abbot, on the various points in dispute. I cannot 
profess to decide which of the antagonists had the advantage on the 
recondite questions of the use of unleavened bread, the Sabbath fasts, 
the calculation of Easter, &c, but the contrast between the urbanity 
of the Greek and the coarse vituperation of the Latin is strikingly 
suggestive as a tacit confession of defeat on the part of the latter. In 
view of the frightful immorality of the Italian clergy, there is some- 
thing peculiarly ludicrous in the mingled anger, contempt, and 
abhorrence with which Humbert alludes to the marriage of the Greek 
clergy, which, as he declares, renders their church the synagogue of 
Satan and the brothel of Balaam and Jezebel, with other equally 
courteous and convincing arguments. Humbert attributes priestly 
marriage altogether to the heresy of the Nicolites, and lays down the 
law on the subject as inexorably as though it were at the time 
observed in his own church. 1 

After an interval of about a year, the line of German pontiffs was 
continued in the person of Gebhardt, Bishop of Eichstedt (Victor 
II.), whose appointment by the emperor was owing in no small degree 
to the influence of Hildebrand — an influence which was daily making 
itself more felt. Installed in the pontifical seat by Godfrey, Duke of 
Tuscany, his efforts to continue the reformation commenced by his 
predecessors aroused a stubborn resistance. There may be no founda- 
tion for the legend of his being saved by a miracle from a sacramental 
cup poisoned by a vengeful sub deacon, nor for the rumors that his 
early death was hastened by the recalcitrant clergy who sought to 
escape the severity of his discipline. There is some probability in 
the stories, however, for, during his short pontificate, interrupted by 
a lengthened stay in Germany and the perpetual vicissitudes of the 
Neapolitan troubles, he yet found time to hold a synod at Florence, 
where he degraded numerous prelates for simony and licentiousness ; 
but, whether true or false, the existence of the reports attests at once 
the sincerity of his zeal and the difficulties of the task. 2 

1 Humberti Card, contra Nicetam xxv. xxvi. 

2 Lambert. Schaffnab. ann. 1054.— Martin. Polon. ann. 1057. 



192 PETER DAMIANI. 

His death in July, 1057, was followed after but a few days' inter- 
val by the election of Frederic, Duke of Lorraine — the empire having 
passed in 1056 from the able hands of Henry III. to the feeble 
regency of his empress, Agnes, as guardian of the unfortunate infant 
Henry IV. — thus releasing the Roman clergy from the degrading 
dictation of a Teutonic potentate. That Frederic should have aban- 
doned the temptations and ambitions of his lofty station to embrace 
the austerities of monastic life in the abbey of Monte Casino, is a 
sufficient voucher that he would not draw back from the work thus 
far hopelessly undertaken by his predecessors. Notwithstanding the 
severity of the canons promulgated during the previous decade, and 
the incessant attempts to enforce them, Rome was still full of married 
priests, and the battle had to be recommenced, as though nothing had 
yet been done. Immediately on his installation, as Stephen IX., he 
addressed himself unshrinkingly to the task. For four months, 
during the most unhealthy season, he remained in Rome, calling 
synod after synod, and laboring with both clergy and people to put 
an end to such unholy unions, 1 and he summarily expelled from the 
church all who had been guilty of incontinence since the prohibitions 
issued in the time of Leo. 2 One case is related of a contumacious 
priest whose sudden death gave him the opportunity of striking terror 
into the hearts of the reckless, for the mutilated funeral rites which 
deprived the hardened sinner of the consolation of a Christian burial 
it was hoped would prove an effectual warning to his fellows. 3 Feel- 
ing the necessity of support in these thankless labors, he forced 
Damiani to leave the retirement of the cloistered shades of Avellana, 
and to bear, as Bishop of Ostia, his share of the burden in the contest 
which he had done so much to provoke — but it was all in vain. 

In little more than half a year Stephen found refuge from strife 
and turmoil in the tomb. The election of his successor, Gerard, 
Bishop of Florence, was the formal proclamation that the church 
was no longer subjected to the control of the secular authority. 
January 18th, 1058, saw the power of the emperor defied, and the 
gauntlet thrown for the quarrel which for three centuries was to 
plunge Central and Southern Europe in turmoil and bloodshed. 
Henry III. had labored conscientiously to rescue the papacy from 
the disgrace into which it had fallen. By removing it from the petty 

1 Leo. Marsic. Chron. Casinens. Lib. n. c. 97. 

2 Damiani Opusc. xvm. Diss. ii. c. 6. 3 Ibid. 



DAMIANI AND HILDEBRAND. 193 

sphere of the counts of Tusculum and the barons of the Campagna, 
and by providing for it a series of highminded and energetic pontiffs, 
he had restored its forfeited position, and indeed had conferred upon 
it an amount of influence which it had never before possessed. His 
thorough disinterestedness and his labors for its improvement had 
disarmed all resistance to the exercise of his power, but when that 
power passed into the hands of an infant but five years old, it was 
natural that the church should seek to emancipate itself from sub- 
jection; and if almost the first use made of its new-found prerogatives 
was to crush the hand that had enabled it to obtain them, we must 
not tax with ingratitude those who were undoubtedly penetrated with 
the conviction that they were only vindicating the imprescriptible 
rights of the church, and that to them was confided the future of 
religion and civilization. 

In the revolution which thus may date its successful commence- 
ment at this period the two foremost figures are Damiani and 
Hildebrand. Damiani the monk, with no further object than the 
abolition of simony and the enforcement of the austerities which he 
deemed indispensable to the salvation of the individual and to the 
purity of the church, looked not beyond the narrow circle of his 
daily life, and sought merely to level mankind by the measure of his 
own stature. Hildebrand, the far-seeing statesman, could make use 
of Damiani and his tribe, perhaps equally fervent in his belief that 
the asceticism of his fellow laborer was an acceptable offering to God, 
but yet with ulterior views of transcendently greater importance. 
In his grand scheme of a theocratic empire, it became an absolute 
prerequisite that the church should hold undivided sway over its 
members; that no human affection should render their allegiance 
doubtful, but that their every thought and action should be devoted 
to the common aggrandizement ; that they should be separated from 
the people by an impassable barrier, and should wield an influence 
which could only be obtained by those who were recognized as 
superior to the weaknesses of common humanity; that the immense 
landed possessions of the church should remain untouched and con- 
stantly increasing as the common property of all, and not be sub- 
jected to the incessant dilapidations inseparable from uxorious or 
paternal affections at a time when the restraints of law and of public 
opinion could not be brought to bear with effect. In short, if the 
church was to assume and maintain the position to which it was 

13 



194 



PETER DAMIANI 



entitled by the traditions of the canon law and of the False Decretals, 
it must be a compact and mutually supporting body, earning by its 
self-inflicted austerities the reverence to which it laid claim, and not 
be diverted from its splendid goal by worldly allurements or carnal 
indulgences and preoccupations. Such was the vision to the realiza- 
tion of which Hildebrand devoted his commanding talents and 
matchless force of will. The temporal success was at length all that 
he could have anticipated. If the spiritual results were craft, 
subtlety, arrogance, cruelty, and sensuality, hidden or cynical, it 
merely proves that his confidence in the strength of human nature 
to endure the intoxicating effects of irresponsible power was mis- 
placed. Meanwhile he labored with Damiani at the preliminary 
measures of his enterprise, and together they bent their energies to 
procure the enforcement of the neglected rules of discipline. 

The new pope, Nicholas II. by name, entered unreservedly into 
their views. Apparently taught by experience the fruitlessness of 
additional legislation when the existing canons were amply sufficient, 
but their execution impossible through the negligence or collusion of 
the ecclesiastical authorities, he assembled, in 1059, a council of a 
hundred and thirteen bishops, in which he adopted the novel and 
hazardous expedient of appealing to the laity, and of rendering them 
at once the judges and executioners of their pastors. A canon was 
promulgated forbidding all Christians to be present at the mass of 
any priest known to keep a concubine or female in his house. 1 This 
probably remained, like its predecessors, a dead letter for the present, 
but we shall see what confusion it excited when it was revived and 
put effectually in force by Gregory VII. some fifteen years later. 
Meanwhile I may observe that it trenched very nearly on the 
Donatist heresy that the sacrament was polluted in polluted hands, 
and it required the most careful word-splitting to prevent the faithful 
from drawing a conclusion so natural. 2 



1 Ut nullus missam audiat presbyteri 
quern scit concubinam. indubitanter 
habere aut subintroductam mulierem. 
— Concil. Roman, ann. 1059 c. 3. 

Singularly enough, this clause is 
omitted in the synodical epistle ad- 
dressed to the Gallic clergy, as given by 
Hugh of Elavigny, Chron. Lib. n. 
ann. 1059. 

2 How utterly this was opposed to 
the received dogmas and practice of the 
church can be seen from the decision of 



Nicholas I. on the same question — 
" Sciscitantibus vobis, si a sacerdote, 
qui sive comprehensus est in adulterio, 
sive de hoc fama sola respersus est, 
debeatis communionemsuscipere, necne, 
respondemus : Non potest aliquis quan- 
tumcumque pollutus sit, sacramenta 
divina polluere, qu£e purgatoria cuncta- 
rum remedia contagionum existunt. 
. . . Sumite, igitur, intrepide ab omni 
sacerdote Christi mysteria, quoniam 
omnia in fide purgantur" (Nicolai I. 
Epist. xcvu. c. 71). See also a simi- 



NICHOLAS II. 



195 



In addition to this, the council ordered, under pain of excommuni- 
cation, that no priest who openly took a concubine (or rather a wife), 
or who did not forthwith separate himself from such a connection 
already existing, should dare to perform any sacred function, or enjoy 



lar decision in 727 by Gregory II. 
(Bonifacii Epist. cxxvi.). 

The only adverse authority of this 
period that I have met with is the 
Penitential of Theodore of Canterbury, 
already referred to, prescribing rebaptism 
for those baptized by priests of known 
unchastity (Lib. II. cap. ii. \ 12. — 
Haddan & Stubbs's Councils, III. 192). 

Damiani saw the danger to which a 
practice such as this exposed the church, 
and lifted up his voice to prevent the 
evil results — 

Audite etiam, laici, 
Qui Christo famulamini ; 
Pro ullo unquam ciimine, 
Pastores non despicite. 

(Carmen ccxxii.) 

and when, about the year 1060, the 
Florentines refused the ministrations of 
their bishop, whom they were deter- 
mined from other causes to eject, he 
reproved them warmly, adducing the 
only reasonable view of the question, 
' ' quod Spiritus Sanctus per improbi 
ministerium dare potest sua charismata ' ' 
(Opusc. xxx. c. 2). 

Simoniacal priests as well as concu- 
binary ones were included in the ban, 
and when, in 1049, Leo IX. commenced 
his vigorous persecution of simony, 
there arose a belief that ordination 
received at hands tainted with that sin 
was null and void. This was promptly 
stigmatized as a heresy, and Damiani 's 
untiring pen was employed in combat- 
ing it. He argued the question very 
thoroughly and keenly when it was 
under debate by a synod, and succeeded 
in procuring its condemnation (Opusc. 
vi. c. 12). 

The prohibition, first proclaimed by 
Nicholas II. and finally enforced by 
Gregory VII. , caused no little trouble 
in the church. Towards the close of 
the century, Urban II. found himself 
obliged to discuss the question, and in 
an epistle to Lucius, provost of the 
church of St. Juventius at Pavia, he 
admits that the sacraments administered 
by guilty priests are uncorrupted, yet 
he approves of their rejection in order 
to stimulate the clergy to virtue, and 
even declares that those who receive 



them, except under instant and pressing 
necessity, are guilty of idolatry ("nisi 
forte sola morte inter veniente, utpote 
ne sine baptismate vel communione 
quilibet humanis rebus excedat; eis, 
inquam, in tantum obsunt, ut veri 
idolatrse sint " — Urbani II. Epist. 273) 
— a decision the logic of which is not 
readily apprehended. St. Anselm of 
Canterbury assents to the doctrine, but 
places it in a more reasonable and prac- 
tical shape — "non quo quis ea quae 
tractent contemnenda, sed tractantes 
execrandos existimet" (Epist. Vin.). 
The consequences of such a system, 
however, if strictly carried out, would 
have been most disastrous to the church, 
and when the zeal of Hildebrand be- 
came forgotten his injunctions were 
overruled. The century was scarcely 
out before Honorius of Autun main- 
tained most positively that Christ oper- 
ates through the hands of the vilest as 
well as of the most holy ministers, pro- 
vided only they are orthodox in faith 
(Eucharistion c. vi. — Pez, Thesaur. 
II. i. 355). About 1150, however, 
Geroch of Keichersperg declares that he 
considered Gregory's commands as still 
in force, and that he paid no more at- 
tention to the masses of concubinary 
priests than if they were so many 
Pagans (Gerhohi Dial, de Differentia 
Cleri— Pez, Thesaur. II. ii. 463). Yet 
before the end of the twelfth century, 
Lucius III. had returned to the policy 
of Nicholas I. — " Sumite ergo ab omni 
sacerdote intrepide Christi mysteria, 
quia omnia in fide Christi purgantur " 
(Post Lateran. Concil. P. l. c. 38), the 
positiveness of which was not much 
affected by the subtle distinctions which 
he endeavored to draw between crimes 
notorious and tolerated. Yet St. Thomas 
Aquinas, on the other hand, affirmed 
that it was a mortal sin to assist at the 
Mass celebrated by a priest who was 
notoriously unchaste (Pontas, Diet, de 
Cas de Conscience II. 1445). The 
church, however, gradually returned to 
the old doctrine and practice. The 
policy of Gregory was condemned as 
a heresy when adopted by the followers 
of Arnold of Brescia (Bonacursi Vit. 
Hsereticorum — D'Achery I. 214) and 



196 



PETEK DAMIANI 



any portion of ecclesiastical revenue. 1 Hildebrand, who was all- 
powerful at the papal court — his enemies accused him of keeping 
Nicholas like an ass in the stable, feeding him to do his work — has 



an austere priest, Albero of Mercke, 
near Cologne, who taught it was 
promptly silenced (Anon. adv. Alber- 
onis errores — Martene Ampl. Coll. IX. 
1251). In 1292 the council of Aschaf- 
fenburg anathematized those who 
" prsesumptione dampnabili " taught 
the heresy that priests in mortal sin 
could not perform the sacred mysteries, 
and it decided " licite ergo aquocumque 
sacerdote ab ecclesia tolerato, divina 
mysteria audiantur et alia recipiantur 
ecclesiastica sacramenta " (Concil. 
Schafnaburg. ann. 1292 can. i. — 
Hartzheim IV. 7). And when Wick- 
liffe and Huss undertook to carry out 
the dicta of Nicholas II. and Gregory 
TIL to their legitimate conclusions, 
the policy was at once recognized as a 
heresy of the worst character and most 
destructive consequence. Thus in 1491 a 
Synod of Bamberg condemns as heretics 
those who refuse to receive the minis- 
trations of sinful priests. — Synod. 
Bamberg, ann. 1491 Tit. xliv. (Lude- 
wig. Script. Eer. German. I. 1241-2). 

1 Quicumque sacerdotum, diacono- 
rum, subdiaconorum . . . concubinam 
palam duxerit vel ductam non reliquerit, 
. . . prsecipimus et omnino contradici- 
mus, ut missam non cantet, neque 
evangelium vel epistolam ac missam 
legat, neque in presbyterio ad divina 
officia cum iis qui prsefatse constitution! 
obedientes fuerint, maneat ; neque par- 
tem ab ecclesia suscipiat. — Concil. Bo- 
man, ann. 1059 c. 3. 

It is evident here that the oppro- 
brious epithet "concubine" is applied 
to those who were as legally wives as it 
was possible to make them. Damiani, 
indeed, admits it, and even intimates 
that concubine was too honorable a 
word to be applied to the wives of 
priests — " Illorum vero clericorum fem- 
inas, qui matrimonia nequeunt legali 
jure contrahere, non conjuges sed con- 
cubinas potius, sive prostibula congrue 
possumus appellare " (Opusc. xvni. 
Diss. iii. c. 2). After this period it will 
be found that the wives of priests were 
rarely dignified with the title of " ux- 
ores," although ordination was not yet 
an impediment destructive of marriage. 

It is as well to observe here that at 
this period and for some time later the 



position of the concubine had not the 
odium attaching to it by modern man- 
ners, and this should be borne in mind 
when reviewing the morals of the Mid- 
dle Ages. The connection was a rec- 
ognized and almost a legal one, follow- 
ing the traditions of the Boman law, 
by which it was legitimate and perma- 
nent, so long as the parties respectively 
remained unmarried. A man could 
not have a wife and concubine at the 
same time (Pauli Sentent. n. 20), nor 
could he legally have two concubines 
together (Novel, xvni. c. 5). Not 
only were such regulations thus pro- 
mulgated by Christian emperors, but 
the relationship was duly recognized 
by the Christian church. The first 
council of Toledo, in 398, enjoined 
upon the faithful ' ' tantum aut unius 
mulieris, aut uxoris aut concubinse, ut 
ei placuerit, sit conjunctione contentus" 
(Concil. Toletan. I. c. 17), showing 
that either connection apparently was 
legitimate, and this is quoted at the 
commencement of the tenth century, 
as still in force, by Begino (De Discip. 
Eccles. Lib. n. c. 100). A half century 
later, about 450, Leo I. was actually 
appealed to to decide whether a man 
who quitted a concubine and took a 
wife committed bigamy — which Leo 
reasonably enough answered in the 
negative (Leon. Epist. xc. c. 5). The 
principle of the Boman law was still 
the rule of the church in the 9th cen- 
tury, for a Boman synod held by 
Eugenius II. in 826 declared " Ut non 
liceat uno tempore duas habere ux- 
ores, uxoremve et concubinam. De 
illo vero qui cum uxore concubinam 
habet, prsecipit, ut si admonitus earn 
a se abjicere noluerit, communione 
privetur." (Pertz, Legum T. II. P. ii. 
p. 12.) The view entertained of the 
matter at the time under consideration 
may be gathered from a canon of the 
councils of Bome, in 1052 and 1063, 
suspending from communion the lay- 
man who had a wife and concubine at 
the same time (Concil. Boman. ann. 
1059 c. 12: ann. 1063 c. 10)— whence 
we may deduce that a concubine alone 
was hardly considered irregular. Dur- 
ing the latter part of the succeeding 
century we find the concubine a recog- 



NICHOLAS II. 



197 



the credit of procuring this legislation. 1 Nicholas, whether acting 
under the impulsion of Hildebrand and Damiani, or from his own 
convictions, followed up the reform with vigor. During the same 
year he visited Southern Italy, and by his decided proceedings at the 
council of Melfi endeavored to put an end to the sacerdotal marriages 
which were openly practised everywhere throughout that region, and 
the Bishop of Trani was deposed as an example and warning to 
others. 2 Damiani was also intrusted with a mission to Milan for the 
same purpose, of which more anon. 



nized institution in Scotland, for the 
laws of William the Lion, after stating 
that the wife was not bound to reveal 
the crimes of her husband, adds " De 
concubina vero et de familia domus 
non est ita ; quia ipsi tenentur revelare 
maleficia magistri sui, aut debent a 
servitio suo recedere " (Statut. Will- 
elmi c. xix. £ 9). In England, late 
in the thirteenth century, Bracton 
speaks of the "concubina legitima " as 
entitled to certain rights and considera- 
tion (Lib. in. Tract, ii. c. 28 $ 1, and 
Lib. iv. Tract, vi. c. 8 £ 4). In Spain, 
at the same period, the son of an un- 
married noble by a concubine, was 
noble (Juan Perez de Lara, in Arch. 
Seld. 130, Bib. Bodl.), and in the Dan- 
ish code of Waldemar II., which was 
in force from 1280 to 1683, there is a 
provision that a concubine kept openly 
for three years shall be held to be a 
legitimate and legal wife (Leg. Cimbric. 
Lib. i. cap. xxvii. Ed. Ancher) ; while 
the elaborate provisions for the division 
of estates between legitimate and ille- 
gitimate children, contained in the code 
compiled by Andreas Archbishop of 
Lunden, in the 13th century, show that 
certain legal rights were recognized in 
the latter (Legg. Scan. Provin. Ed. 
Thorsen pp. 110-2). Indeed, in the 
Norwegian law of that period, when the 
king left no legitimate sons the crown 
descended to illegitimates (Jarnsida, 
Kristendoms-Balkr, c. III.). In Bi- 
gorre, concubines, under the name of 
Massipia, were recognized by law, and 
formal notarial contracts were drawn 
up, as late as the close of the fifteenth 
century, specifying the price to be paid 
and the duration of the connection ; 
and when the man was already married 
he sometimes engaged to marry the 
massipia in case of his wife's death 
during the term (Lagreze, Hist, du 
Droit dans les Pyrenees, Paris, 1867, 



p. 377). We must therefore bear in 
mind that, until the rule of sacerdotal 
celibacy became rigorously enforced, 
the "concubina" of the canons gen- 
erally means a wife, and that for some 
time afterwards the concubine was by 
no means necessarily the shameless 
woman implied under the modern ac- 
ceptation of the term. 

1 Hujus autem constitutionis maxime 
fuit auctor Hildebrandus, tunc Komanse 
ecclesise archidiaconus, naereticis max- 
ime infestus. — Bernaldi Chron. ann. 
1061. Benzo declares, in his slashing 
way, stigmatizing Hildebrand as a 
Sarabite, or wandering monk, " De 
cetero pascebat suum Nicholaum Pran- 
dellus in Lateranensi palatio, quasi 
asinum in stabulo. Nullum erat opus 
Nicholaitse, nisi perverbumSarabaitge" 
(Comment, de Eeb. Henr. IV. Lib. 
vii. c. 2). The verses of Damiani on 
the influence of Hildebrand are too well 
known to quote. 

2 . . . Hie [Nicholaus] ecclesiastica 

propter 
Ad partes illas tractanda negotia 

venit ; 
Namque sacerdotes, levitse, clericus 

omnis 
Hac regione palam se conjugio socia- 

bant. 
Concilium celebrans ibi, Papa faventi- 

bus illi 
Prgesulibus centum jus ad synodale 

vocatis, 
Ferre Sacerdotes monet, altarisque 

ministros 
Arma pudicitiae, vocat hos et prsecipit 

esse 
Ecclesiae sponsos, quia non est jure 

sacerdos 
Luxurise cultor : sic extirpavit ab illis 
Partibus uxores omnino presbyter- 

orum. 

(Gulielmi Appuli de Normann. 
Lib. II.) 



198 



PETER DAMIANI 



Nor did Nicholas confine his efforts to Italy. His legates in 
other countries endeavored to enforce the canons, and apparently had 
little difficulty in obtaining the adoption of stringent regulations — 
the more easily acceded to that they were utterly disregarded. 
Thus his legate Stephen, early in 1060, held councils at Vienne and 
Tours, where the prohibitions of the synod of Rome were agreed to, 
and those who did not at once abandon either their women or their 
benefices were declared to be degraded forever, without hope of resti- 
tution. 1 

In practice, however, all these measures of reform were scarcely 
felt except by the lower grades of the ecclesiastical body. The 
prelates, whose lives were equally flagitious, and far more damaging 
to the reputation and purity of the church, were enabled virtually to 
escape. The storm passed beneath them, and with few exceptions 
persecuted only those who were powerless to oppose anything but 
passive resistance. The uncompromising zeal of Damiani was not 
likely to let a temporizing lenity so misplaced and so fatal to the 
success of the cause remain unrebuked; and he calls to it the atten- 
tion of Nicholas, stigmatizing the toleration of episcopal sins as an 
absurdity no longer to be endured. 2 The occasion of this exhorta- 
tion was a commission intrusted by the pope to Damiani, to hold a 
friendly conference with the prelates, and to induce them to reform 
their evil ways without forcing the authorities to the scandal of public 
proceedings. The fear of such results and the fiery eloquence of 
Damiani were alike unheeded. The bishops confessed themselves 
unequal to the task of preserving their chastity, and indifferent to 
the remote contingency of punishment which had so often been in- 
effectually threatened that its capacity for exciting apprehension had 
become exhausted. With all the coarseness of monastic asceticism, 
Damiani describes the extent of the evil, and its public and unblush- 
ing exhibition; the families which grew and increased around the 
prelates, the relationships which were ostentatiously acknowledged, 
and the scandals perpetrated in the church of God. In the boldest 
strain he then incites the pope to action, blames his misplaced clem- 
ency, and urges the degradation of all offenders, irrespective of rank, 



1 Concil. Turon. ann. 1060 c. 6. 

2 Porro autem nos contra divina 
mandata, personarum acceptores, in 
minoribus quidam sacerdotibus luxurise 



inquinamenta persequimur; in epi- 
scopis autem, quod nimis absurdum est, 
per silentii tolerantiam veneramur. — 
Damiani Opusc. xvn. c. 1. 



FAILURE OF THE REFORMATION. 



199 



pointing out the impossibility of reforming the priesthood if the 
bishops are allowed full and undisturbed license. 1 

This shows that even if the machinery of ecclesiastical authority 
was at work to correct the errors of the plebeian clergy, it was only 
local and sporadic in its efforts. In some favored dioceses, perhaps, 
blessed with a puritan bishop, the decrees of the innumerable coun- 
cils may have been put in force, but in the great body of the church 
the evil remained unaltered. During this very year, 1060, Nicholas 
again found it necessary to promulgate a decretal ordering priests to 
quit their wives or resign their position, and this in terms which 
prove how utterly futile had been all previous fulminations. He also 
manifested some consideration for temporal necessities by allowing 
the discarded wives to live with their husbands under proper super- 



vision/ 



How complete was the disregard of these commands is well illus- 
trated by an epistle which about this time Damiani addressed to the 
chaplains of Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Tuscany. From this we 
learn that these prominent ecclesiastics openly defended sacerdotal 
marriage, pronounced it canonical, and were ready to sustain their 
position in controversy. 3 As Duke Godfrey, with the pious Beatrice 
his wife, was the leading potentate in Italy, and as his territories 
were in close proximity to Home itself, it is evident that the reform 
so laboriously prosecuted for the previous ten or fifteen years had 
thus far accomplished little. 



Parties were now beginning to define themselves. The reformers, 
irritated by their want of success, were for more stringent measures, 
and when the canonical punishments of degradation and excommuni- 
cation were derided and defied, they were ready, as we shall see 



1 Sanctis eorum femoribus volui seras 
apponere. Tentavi genitalibus sacer- 
dotum (ut ita loquar) continentiae fibu- 
las adhibere. . . . Hujus autem capituli 
nudam saltern promissionem tremulis 
prolatam labiis difficilius extorquemus. 
Primo, quia fastigium castitatis attin- 
gere se posse desperant; deinde quia 
synodali se plectendos esse sententia 
propter luxurige vitium non formidant. 
... Si enim malum hoc esset occul- 
tum, fuerat fortassis utcunque feren- 
dum ; sed, ah scelus ! omni pudore 
postposito, pestis hasc in tantum pro- 
rupit audaciam, ut per ora populi 



volitent loca scortantium, nomina con- 
cubinarum, socerorum quoque vocabula 
simul et socruum . . . postremo, ubi 
omnis dubietas tollitur, uteri tumentes 
et pueri vagientes etc. — Damiani Opusc. 

XVII. 

2 Decret. Nicolai PP. c. 3, 4 (Ba- 
luz. et Mansi II. 118-9). 

3 " Dogmatizatis enim sacri ministros 
altaris jure posse mulieribus permisceri 

Jam vero quod impudenter 
asseritis, ministros altaris conjugio de- 
bere sociari etc." — Damiani Lib. v. 
Epist. 13. 



200 PETER DAMIANI. 

hereafter at Milan, to have recourse to the secular arm, and to invoke 
the aid of sword and lance. The clergy, finding that passive resist- 
ance did not wear out the zeal of their persecutors, that the storm 
promised to be endless, and warned by the fate of the Milanese, were 
prepared to adopt an aggressive policy, and to seek their safety in 
revolutionizing the central authority. Perhaps the bishops, whose 
silence had been secured by the toleration so distasteful to Damiani, 
began to feel the pressure which he was bringing to bear upon them, 
and to look forward with apprehension to the unknown evils of 
the future. If so, they were ready to make common cause with 
their flocks, and throw into the scale the immense influence due to 
their sacred character and temporal power. Thus only the occasion 
was wanting for an open rupture, and that occasion was furnished 
by the death of Nicholas in July, 1061. 

The factions of the day had alienated a powerful portion of the 
Roman barons from the papal party as represented by Hildebrand. 
They at once united with the Lombard clergy in addressing a depu- 
tation to the young Henry IV., who was still under the tutelage of 
his mother Agnes, offering him a golden crown and the title of 
Patrician. The empire was not indisposed to vindicate its old pre- 
rogatives, recently annulled by the initial act of Nicholas limiting 
the right of papal election to the Roman clergy. The overtures 
were therefore welcomed, and while Anselmo, Bishop of Lucca, was 
chosen in Rome, October 1st, 1061, assuming the name of Alexander 
II., on the 28th of the same month a rival election took place in 
Germany, by which Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, was invested with 
the perilous dignity of Antipope, and divided the allegiance of 
Christendom under the title of Honorius II. At least two Italian 
bishops lent their suffrages to these proceedings — those of Vercelli 
and Piacenza — as representatives of the Lombard interest ; and, if 
the testimony of Damiani is to be believed, they were men whose 
dissolute lives fitly represented the license which the reformers 
asserted to be the principal object of the schismatics. 1 

The married or concubinary clergy were now no longer merely 
isolated criminals, to be punished more or less severely for infractions 
of discipline. They were a united body, who boldly proclaimed the 
correctness of their course, and defended themselves by argument as 

1 Ad Cadaloum Lib. I. Epist. 20. 



THE ANTI-POPE CADALUS 



201 



well as by political intrigues and military operations. They thus 
became offenders of a far deeper dye, for the principles of the church 
led irrevocably to the conclusion, paradoxical as it may seem, that he 
who was guilty of immorality, knowing it to be wrong, was far less 
criminal than he who married, believing it to be right. 1 What before 
had been a transgression, to be redeemed by penance and repentance, 
became heresy — an awful word in those fierce times. The odious 
name of Nicolites was speedily fastened on the schismatics, and the 
Apocalyptic denunciations of St. John were universally held appli- 
cable to them. According to Damiani, they supported Cadalus in 
the expectation that his success would lead to a modification in the 
discipline of the church, by which the license to marry would be 
accorded to all ecclesiastics. 2 

That support was efficient, and it was shortly needed. A revolution 
suddenly occurred in the politics of Germany. Some dissatisfied 
nobles and prelates conspired to obtain power by overthrowing the 
regency of the dowager Empress Agnes. A stroke of daring 
treachery put them in possession of the person of the boy-king, and 
the arch-conspirator Hanno of Cologne earned his canonization by 
reversing at once the policy of the previous administration. In a 
solemn council held at Osber in 1062, the pretensions of Cadalus 
were repudiated, and Alexander II. was recognized as pope. Still 
Cadalus did not despair, but with the aid of the Lombard clergy he 
raised forces and marched on Rome, relying on his adherents within 
the walls. They admitted him into the Leonine city, where he threw 
himself into the impregnable castle of San Angelo. Immediately 
besieged by the Romans, he resolutely held out for two years, in spite 
of incredible privations, but at length he sought safety in flight with 
but a single follower. Meanwhile his party, as a political body, had 
become broken up, and though Henry, Archbishop of Ravenna, still 
adhered to him, he was powerless to maintain his claims. Finally, 



1 In 1060, Cardinal Humbert of 
Silva-Candida, in combating the pre- 
vailing vice of simony, made use of 
this argument, reasoning that an im- 
moral priest may be suspended or may 
be tolerated in hope of amendment, 
but if he trenches on heresy, there can 
be neither hope nor mercy for him 
(Humbert. Cardinal, adv. Simoniac. 
Lib. in. c. 43). Damiani applied this 
to the defenders of marriage with all 
his vigor. " Qui nimirum dum cor- 



ruunt, impudici ; dum defendere ni- 
tuntur, merito judicantur hseretici" 
(Opusc. xviii. Diss. ii. c. 8). "Nam 
cum peccat homo, quasi in puteum 
labitur ; cum vero peccata defendit, 
os putei super eum, ne pateat egressus, 
urgetur. . . Hoc autem inter peccato- 
rem et hsereticum distat : quia peccator 
est qui delinquit, hsereticus autem qui 
peccatum per pravum dogma defendit" 
(Opusc. xxiv. Praef.). 

2 Opusc. xviii. Diss. ii. c. 8. 



202 



PETEE DAMIANI. 



in 1067, Alexander held a council at Mantua, cleared his election of 
imputed irregularity, and was universally recognized. 

During this period, the "Nicolitan" clergy by no means aban- 
doned their tenets. In 1063, as soon as he could feel reasonably 
assured of his eventual success, Alexander assembled more than a 
hundred bishops in council at Home, where he emphatically repeated 
the canon promulgated in 1059 by Nicholas II., which was not only 
a proclamation of his fidelity to the cause of reform, but an admission 
that the legislation of his predecessor had thus far proved fruitless. 
Damiani, also, labored unceasingly with argument and exhortation, 
but the vehemence of his declamation only shows how widely extended 
and how powerful the heresy still was. We shall see hereafter that 
on a mission to Milan, to reduce the married clergy to obedience, he 
barely escaped with his life ; and on another to Lodi, with the same 
object, the schismatics, after exhausting argument, in support of 
priestly marriage, threatened him with arms in their hands, and 
again his saintly dignity came near being enhanced by the honors of 
martyrdom. 1 Even the restriction upon second marriages was occa- 
sionally lost sight of, and such most irregular unions were celebrated 
with all the ceremony and rejoicings that were customary among 
laymen in their public nuptials. 2 Yet, notwithstanding the pious 
fervor which habitually stigmatized the wives as harlots and the 
husbands as unbridled adulterers, Damiani himself allows us to see 
that the marriage relation was preserved with thorough fidelity on 
the part of the women, and was compatible with learning, decency, 
and strict attention to religious duty by the men. Urging the 
wives to quit their husbands, he finds it necessary to combat their 
scruples at breaking what was to them a solemn engagement, fortified 
with all legal provisions and religious rites, but which he pronounces 
a frivolous and meaningless ceremony. 3 So, in deploring the habitual 
practice of marriage among the Piedmontese clergy, he regards it as 



1 Opusc. xvin. Diss. ii. c. 3. 

2 Obeunte igitur pellice, viduatus 
adjecit iterare conjugium. Quid plura? 
Confoederat sibi quasi tabularum lege 
prostibulum, amicorum atque con- 
finium congregat nuptiali more con- 
ventum, epulaturis etiam totius afflu- 
ently providet apparatum — Damiani 
Opusc. xvin. Diss. ii. c. 6. 

3 Nee vos terreat quod forte, non 



dicam fidei sed perfidise, vos annulus 
subarrhavit : quod rata et monimenta 
dotalia notarius quasi matrimonii jure 
conscripsit ; quod juramentum ad con- 
nrmancLam quodammodo conjuii co- 
pulam utrinque processit. Totum hoc 
quod videlicet apud alios est conjugii 
firmamentum, inter vos vanum judi- 
catur et frivolum — Opusc. xvin. Diss. 
ii. c. 7. 



HIS TIKELESS ZEAL. 



203 



the only blot upon men who otherwise appeared to him as a chorus 
of angels, and as shining lights in the church. 1 

Such considerations as these, however, had no influence in dimin- 
ishing Damiani's zeal. To Cunibert, Bishop of Turin, whose 
spiritual flock he thus so much admired, he addressed, about 1065, 
an epistle reproaching him with his criminal laxity in permitting 
such transgressions in his diocese, and urging him strenuously to 
undertake the reform which was so necessary to the purity of the 
church. 2 Cunibert apparently did not respond to the exhortation, 
for Damiani proceeded to appeal to the temporal sovereign of Savoy 
and Piedmont, Adelaide, widow of Humbert-aux-Blanches-Mains, 
who was then regent. In an elaborate epistle he urges her to attack 
the wives, while her bishops shall coerce the husbands ; but if the 
latter neglect that duty, he invites her to interpose with the secular 
power, and thus avert from her house and her country the Divine 
wrath which must else overtake them. 3 That so strict a churchman 
as Damiani should not only tolerate but advise the exercise of tem- 
poral authority over ecclesiastics, and this, too, in a matter purely 
ecclesiastical, shows how completely the one idea had become domi- 
nant in his mind, since he was willing to sacrifice to it the privileges 
and immunities for which the church had been struggling, by fair 
means and foul, for six centuries. It would appear, moreover, that 
this was not the first time that potentates had been allowed, or had 
assumed, to exercise power in the matter, for Damiani cautions the 
Countess Adelaide not to follow the example of some evil-minded 
magnates and make the pretence of reformation an excuse for spoiling 
the church. 4 

The zeal of the indefatigable Damiani continued to be as uncon- 
querable as the stubbornness of his adversaries, and some two years 
later we find him again at work. The date of 1067 is generally 
attributed to a letter which he addressed to Peter, Cardinal Arch- 
priest of the Lateran, stimulating him to renewed exertions in extir- 
pating this foul disgrace to the church, and arguing at great length 
in reply to the reasons and excuses with which the clerical Benedicks 
continued to defend their vile heresy. 5 



1 Opusc. xvin. Diss. ii. Prsef. 

2 Opusc. xviii. Diss. ii. 

3 Opusc. xviii. Diss. iii. c. 1, 2. 



4 Opusc. xviii. Diss. iii. c. 3. 

5 Opusc. xviii. Diss. i. 



204 



PETEK DAMIANI. 



In all this controversy, it is instructive to observe how Damiani 
shows himself to be the pure model of monkish asceticism, untainted 
with any practical wisdom and unwarped by any earthly considera- 
tions. When Hildebrand struggled for sacerdotal celibacy, the 
shrewdness of the serpent guided the innocence of the dove, and he 
fought for what he knew would prove a weapon of tremendous power 
in securing for the church the theocracy which was his pure ideal of 
human institutions. Not a thought of the worldly advantages 
consequent upon the reform appears to have crossed the mind of 
Damiani. To him it was simply a matter of conscience that the 
ministers of Christ should be adorned with the austere purity through 
which alone lay the path to salvation. Accordingly the arguments 
which he employs in his endless disputations carefully avoid the 
practical reasons which were the principal motive for enforcing celi- 
bacy. His main reliance is on the assumption that, as Christ was 
born of a virgin, so he should be served and the Eucharist be handled 
only by virgins ; and his subsidiary logic consists of mystical inter- 
pretations of passages in the Jewish history of the Old Testament. 
Phineas, of course, affords a favorite and oft-repeated argument and 
illustration. Allusions to Ahimelech can also be understood, but 
the reasoning based upon the tower of Sichem, the linen girdle of 
Jeremiah, and the catastrophe of Cain and Abel is convincing only 
as to the unworldliness of the recluse of Avellana. 

Notwithstanding all his learning and eloquence, the authority of 
his name, the lustre of his example, and the tireless efforts of his 
fiery energy, the cause to which he had devoted himself did not 
advance. The later years of Alexander's pontificate afford unmis- 
takable indications that the puritan party were becoming discouraged ; 
that they were disposed to abate some of their demands, and were 
ready to make concessions to the refractory spirit which refused 
obedience in both principle and practice. Thus, in 1068, a decretal 
addressed to the authorities of Dalmatia merely threatens suspension 
until satisfaction is made by those who marry in orders or who refuse 
to abandon their wives. 1 A somewhat different position was taken 



1 Alex. II. Epist. 125.— Batthyani 
(Leg. Eccles. Hungar. I. 407) remarks 
that this lenity arose'from the fact that 
otherwise divine service would have 
ceased — " omnes ecclesias a divinis offi- 
ciis vacassent." 

It is also observable that subdeacons 



are not included in this prohibition — 
a remarkable exemption, since by this 
time their subjection to the law of 
celibacy had become a settled rule in 
the Eoman church. I may here re- 
mark that I had collected considerable 
material to trace the varying practice 



ALEXANDER II. RECEDES. 



205 



with the Venetians. An epistle to the Patriarch of Grado orders the 
deprivation of those who live in open and undisguised concubinage, 
but significantly confines its penalties to notorious infractions of the 
rule, and leaves to God the investigation of such as may be prudently 
concealed. 1 This manifests a willingness to temporize with offenders 
whose respect for papal authority would induce them to abstain from 
defiant disobedience — a pusillanimous tempting of hypocrisy to which 
the bolder Hildebrand could never have given his consent. A prin- 
ciple of great importance, moreover, was abandoned when, in 1070, 
Alexander assented to the consecration of the bishop-elect of Le 
Mans, who was the son of a priest ; 2 and when he stated that this 
was not a precedent for the future, but merely a concession to the 
evil of the times, his laxity was the more impressive, since he thus 
admitted his violation of the canons. He subsequently even enlarged 
this special permission into a general rule, with merely the saving 
clause that the proposed incumbent should be more worthy than his 
competitors. 3 Alexander, moreover, maintained in force the ancient 
rule that no married man could assume monastic vows unless his wife 
gave her free consent, and entered a convent at the same time. 4 We 
shall see that in little more than half a century the progress of sacer- 
dotalism rendered the sacrament of marriage powerless in comparison 
with the vows of religion. 

Alexander clearly had not in him the stuff of which persecutors 
and reformers are made, as, indeed, his merciful liberality in ex- 
tending over the Jews throughout Europe the protection of the Holy 



with regard to the subdiaconate, but as 
it involves no principle, merely depend- 
ing in earlier times upon the local cus- 
tom as to the functions of that grade, 
the discussion would scarcely repay the 
space that it would occupy. 

1 De manifestis loquimur; secre- 
torum autem cognitor et judex Deus 
est.— Alex. II. Epist. 118. 

2 Cenomanensem electum, pro eo 
quod Alius sacerdotis dicitur, si cseterse 
virtutes in eum conveniunt, non reji- 
cimus ; sed, suffragantibus meritis, 
patienter suscipimus ; non tamen ut 
hoc pro regula in posterum assumatur, 
sed ad tempus ecclesise periculo con- 
sulitur. — Gratian. Dist. lvi. c. 13. 

3 Nam pro eo quod films sacerdotis 
dicitur, si cseterse virtutes in eum con- 
veniant, non rejicimus, sed suffragan- 



tibus meritis connivendo, eum recipi- 
mus. — Alex. II. Epist. 133. Baronius 
attributes to this the date of 1071. 

The contrast between the weakness 
of Alexander and the unbending ri- 
gidity of his successor, Hildebrand, 
is well shown by comparing this un- 
limited acceptance of priestly offspring 
with the refusal of the latter to permit 
the elevation of a clerk requested by 
both his bishop and the King of Aragon, 
simply because he was illegitimate, 
although in other respects admitted 
to be unexceptionable (Gregor. VII. 
Lib. ii. Epist. 50). We have already 
seen that even amid the license which 
prevailed during the early part of the 
century, some German bishops ha- 
bitually refused orders to the sons of 
priests. 

* Alex. II. Epist. 112. 



206 PETER DAMIANI. 

See would sufficiently demonstrate. At length he, too, was released 
from earthly cares, and on the day after his decease, on April 22, 
1073, his place was filled by the man who of all others was the most 
perfect impersonation of the aggressive churchmanship of the age. 

Before proceeding, however, to sketch the stormy pontificate of 
Hildebrand in its relation to our subject, I must pause to relate the 
episode of the Milanese clergy. The struggle in that city to enforce 
the ascetic principles of the reformers gives so perfect an inside view 
of the reformation itself, and its various stages have been handed 
down to us with so much minuteness by contemporary writers, that 
it deserves to be treated by itself as a disconnected whole. 



XIII 
MILAN. 



In the primitive ages of the church, Milan was at the head of the 
Northern Vicariate of Italy, as Rome was of the Southern. When 
the preponderance of the latter city became established, the glory of 
St. Ambrose shed a lustre over his capital which the true Milanese 
fondly regarded as rivalling that of St. Peter and the superiority of 
Rome was grudgingly admitted. In the eleventh century, Milan is 
found occupying the chief place among the Lombard cities, virtually 
governed by its archbishop, whose temporal as well as spiritual 
power rendered his position one of great influence and importance. 
Yet even at that early period, the republican spirit was already 
developed, and the city was divided into factions, as the nobles and 
citizens struggled for alternate supremacy. 

Milan was moreover the headquarters of the hidden Manichseism 
which, after surviving centuries of persecution in the East, was now 
secretly invading Europe through Bulgaria, and had already at- 
tracted the vigilant attention of the church in localities widely sepa- 
rated. Its earliest open manifestation was in Toulouse, in 1018 ; at 
Orleans, in 1023, King Robert the Pious caused numerous sectaries 
to expiate their heresy at the stake, where their unshrinking zeal 
excited general wonder. At Cambrai and Liege similar measures of 
repression became necessary in 1025; the Emperor Henry III. 
endeavored at Goslar, in 1052, to put an end to them with the 
gallows ; and traces of them are to be found at Agen about the year 
1100 ; at Soissons in 1114 ; at Toulouse in 1118 ; at Cologne in 
1146 ; at Perigord in 1147 ; in England in 1166, until we can trace 
their connection with the Albigenses, whose misfortunes fill so black 
a page in the history of the thirteenth century. Calling themselves 
Cathari, and stigmatized by true believers under various opprobrious 
names, of which the commonest was Paterins, their doctrines were 



208 



MILAN 



those of the ancient Manichseans, their most characteristic tenets 
being belief in the dualistic principle, and the abhorrence of animal 
food and of marriage. 1 The prevalence of these dogmas among the 
Milanese populace furnishes a probable explanation of much that 
took place during the contest between Rome and the married priests. 



Eriberto di Arzago, who filled the archiepiscopal chair of Milan 
from 1019 to 1045, was one of the most powerful princes of Italy, 



1 I think that there is too much con- 
current testimony to this effect to admit 
a reasonable doubt that the Albigenses 
were Manichaeans. I may return to 
them hereafter, and therefore will not 
discuss the point here. As regards the 
earlier heretics, however, I may men- 
tion the following contemporary au- 
thorities : — 

With respect to those of Toulouse 
and Orleans, the " Fragmentum His- 
toric Aquitaniae " (Pithoei Hist. Franc. 
Script, p. 82) says: " Eo tempore 
decern ex canonicis sanctse crucis 
Aurelianis probati sunt esse Mani- 
chaei, quos rex Eobertus quum nollent 
ad Catholicam converti fidem, igne cre- 
mari jussit. Simili modo apud Tholo- 
sam inventi sunt Manichsei, et ipsi igne 
cremati sunt : et per diversas Occidentis 
partes Manichaei exorti perlatibula sese 
occultare coeperunt" — and their errors 
are thus specified in the ' ' Fragmentum 
Hist. Franc." (Op. cit. p. 84) " Ii 
dicebant non posse aliquem in bap- 
tismate spiritum sanctum suscipere, et 
post criminale peccatum veniam non 
promereri ; impositionem manuum ni- 
hil posse conferre ; nuptias spernebant ; 
episcopum afiirmabant non posse ordi- 
nare, &c." 

In the Artesian synod, held in 1025 
to condemn those of Cambrai, the 
tenth canon is directed against their 
hostility to marriage (Labbei et Coleti 
XI. 1177—8). — See also the prefatory 
letter of Gerard, Bishop of Cambrai — 
" Conjugatos nequaquam ad regnum 
pertinere" — (Hartzheim Concil. Ger- 
man. III. 68). 

Concerning those executed at Gos- 
lar in 1052 — " Ibique quosdam haere- 
ticos, inter alia pravi erroris dogmata 
Manichsea secta omnis esum animalis 
exsecrantes, consensu cunctorum, ne 
hseretica scabies latius serpens plures 
inficeret, in patibulis suspendi jussit." 
— Herman. Contract, ann. 1052. 

About 1100 Eadolphus Ardens de- 



scribes the Manichaeans who infested 
the territory of Agen, and recapitulates 
their doctrines as embracing dualism, 
abhorrence of animal food and of mar- 
riage, rejection of the Old Testament 
and part of the New, disbelief in the 
Eucharist, in baptism and resurrection, 
&c. — "Dicunt enim tantum flagitium 
esse accedere ad uxorem, quantum ad 
matrem vel ad filiam" — Radulf. Ardent. 
T. I. P. ii. Homil. 19. 

The council of Toulouse, held by 
Calixtus II. in 1119, adopted a canon 
condemning those who objected to the 
Eucharist, priesthood, and legitimate 
marriage, showing that Manichaeism 
was unextinguished in Languedoc. — 
Udalr. Babenb. Cod. Lib. n. c. 303. 

In 1146 a synod at Cologne tried 
certain heretics, but before the ex- 
amination was concluded the unfor- 
tunates were seized by the rabble and 
burned " et quod magis mirabile est, 
ipsi tormentum ignis non solum cum 
patientia, sed et cum laetitia introierunt 
et sustinuerunt." Their Manichaeism 
is manifested by their tenets concerning 
marriage — " De baptismo nostro non 
curant : Nuptias damnant. ... In 
cibis suis vetant omne genus lactis, et 
quod inde conficitur, et quidquid ex 
coitu procreatur" — ISTarratio Everwini 
Propositi (Hartzheim. III. 353-4). 
Cf. Bernardi Serm. 65, 66, in Cantica. 

The accusations so freely dissemi- 
nated against them for the purpose of 
stirring up popular indignation — such 
as that in their conventicles, after re- 
ligious exercises, the lights were extin- 
guished, and the congregation aban- 
doned themselves to indiscriminate 
excesses — are, of course, without foun- 
dation. It is instructive to observe 
that precisely the same scandals were 
asserted of the early Christians (Tertull. 
Apologet. c. vii.) — so little does human 
nature change with the lapse of cen- 
turies. 



ELECTION OF GUIDO DI VALATE. 209 

and though unsuccessful in the revolt which he organized in 1034 
against the Emperor Conrad the Salic, his influence was scarcely 
diminished after his return from the expulsion which punished his 
rebellion. 1 At the time of his death, Milan was passing through one 
of its accustomed civil dissensions. The Motta, or body of burgesses, 
had quarrelled with the nobles and archbishop, and, under the leader- 
ship of an apostate noble named Lanzo, had expelled them from the 
city — an ejection which was followed by an unsuccessful siege of 
three years. At length, in 1044, Lanzo obtained promise of armed 
assistance from Henry III., which reduced the nobles to subjection, 
and they returned in peace. Eriberto died the following year, and 
the election of his successor caused great excitement. Erlembaldo, 
the popular chief (dominus populi), called the citizens together to 
nominate candidates, and induced them to select four. One of these 
was Landolfo Cotta, a notary of the sacred palace, who was brother 
to Erlembaldo ; another was Anselmo di Badagio, Cardinal of the 
Milanese church, subsequently Bishop of Lucca, and finally, as we 
have seen, pope, under the name of Alexander II. ; the third was 
Arialdo, of the family of the capitanei of Carinate ; and the fourth 
was Otho, another Milanese cardinal. These four were sent to the 
Emperor, for him to make his selection ; but the faction of the nobles 
despatched a rival in the person of Guido di Valate, who already 
held the appointment of secretary from the emperor, and who had 
recommended himself by zealous services, which now claimed their 
reward. Henry gave the coveted dignity to Guido, to the great 
surprise and indignation of the popular nominees. Their expostula- 
tions were unavailing, and both parties returned — Guido to assume 
an office harassed by the opposition of the people on whom he had 
been forced, and the disappointed candidates to brood over the 
wrongs which had deprived them of the splendid prize. 2 We shall 
see how thoroughly three of those candidates avenged themselves. 

It is observable from this transaction that Milan was completely 
independent of Rome. The sovereignty of the distant emperor, 



1 It is scarcely worth while to more 
than refer to the assertion of mediaeval 
Milanese chroniclers that Eriberto mar- 
ried a noble lady named Useria. Puri- 
celli (Muratori Script. Her. Ital. V. 
122-3) has sufficiently demonstrated 
its improbability. He does not, how- 
ever, allude to the argument derivable 



from the fact that Eriberto 's name is 
signed to the proceedings of the council 
of Pavia in 1022, where priestly mar- 
riage was so severely condemned. 

2 Gualvaneo Mamma, Chron. Mag. 
c. 763. — Landulph. Senior. Mediolan. 
Hist. Lib. III. c. 2. 



14 



210 



MILAN 



absorbed in the dissensions of Germany, could press but lightly on 
the powerful and turbulent city. Rome was not even thought of in 
creating the archbishop, whose spiritual and temporal power were 
granted by the imperial investiture. But when, soon after, the 
German popes had rescued the papacy from the contempt into which 
it had fallen, its domination over Milan became a necessary step in 
its progress to universal supremacy, and lent additional vigor to the 
desires of the reformers to restore the forgotten discipline of the 
church in a city so influential. 

Marriage, at this time, was a universal privilege of the Milanese 
clergy. If we may believe the testimony of one who was almost a 
contemporary, the candidate for holy orders was strictly examined as 
to his learning and morals. These being satisfactory, he was, if 
unmarried, asked if he had strength to remain so, and if he replied 
in the negative, he could forthwith betroth himself and marry with 
the ordinary legal and religious ceremonies. Second marriages were 
not allowed, and the Levitical law as to the virginity of the bride 
was strictly observed. Those who remained single were objects of 
suspicion, while those who performed their sacred functions duly, 
and brought up their families in the fear of God, were respected 
and obeyed by their flocks as pastors should be, and were eligible to 
the episcopate. Concubinage was regarded as a heinous offence, and 
those guilty of it were debarred from all promotion 1 — in this reversing 



1 Landulf. Senior. L. ir. c. 35. 

The writer was a partisan of the 
married clergy ; but his description is 
confirmed by the testimony which 
Damiani bears (ante, p. 203) to the 
good character of the married clergy 
of Savoy. Still, there may be some 
truth in the counter statement of an 
opponent, S. Andrea of Vallombrosa, 
a disciple of S. Arialdo — "Nam alii 
cum canibus et accipitribus hue 
illucque pervagantes, suum venationi 
lubricse famulatum tradebant ; alii 
vero tabernarii et nequam villici, alii 
impii usurarii existebant ; cuncti fere 
aut cum publicis uxoribus sive scortis, 
suam ignominiose ducebant vitam . . . 
Universi sic sub simoniaca hseresi 
tenebantur implicit!. " — Yit. S. Ari- 
aldi c. i. No. 7. 

The Milanese defended their position 
not only by Scripture texts, but also by 



a decision which they affirmed was 
rendered by St. Ambrose, to whom the 
question of the permissibility of sacer- 
dotal marriage had been referred by the 
pope and bishops. Of course the story 
was without foundation, but singularly 
enough, the Milanese clung to it long 
after the subject had ceased to be open 
to discussion. Puricelli has investi- 
gated the matter with his usual con- 
scientious industry, and shows the repe- 
tition of the legend not only by Datius 
and Landulfus Senior in the eleventh 
century, but by G-ualvaneo Flamma in 
the thirteenth, by the author of the 
Flos Florum, by Pietro Agario and by 
Bernardino Corio in the fifteenth, and 
by Tristano Calco in the sixteenth cen- 
tury — the two latter falling in conse- 
quence under the revision of the Index. 
(Script. Eer. Ital. V. 122-3.) 



COMMENCEMENT OF THE TKOUBLES 



211 



the estimate placed upon the respective infractions of discipline by 
the Roman church. 



The see of Lucca consoled Anselmo di Badagio for the failure of 
his aspirations towards the archiepiscopate, and the other disappointed 
candidates for a while cherished their mortification in silence. Lan- 
dolfo and Arialdo were inclined to asceticism, and a visit which 
Anselmo paid to Milan stimulated them to undertake a reform which 
could not but prove a source of endless trouble to their successful 
competitor Guido. Leaders of the people, and masters of the art of 
inflaming popular passion, they caused assemblies to be held in which 
they inveighed in the strongest terms against the irregularities of the 
clergy, whose sacraments they stigmatized as the foulest corruption, 
whose churches they denounced as dens of prostitution, and whose 
property they assumed to be legitimate prey for the spoiler. Guido 
in vain endeavored to repress the agitation thus produced, argued in 
favor of the married clergy, and was sustained by the party of the 
nobles. In a city like Milan, it was not difficult to excite a tumult. 
Besides the influence of the perennial factions, ever eager to tear 
each other's throats, the populace were ready to yield to the eloquence 
of the bold reformers. The Manichsean heresy had taken deep root 
among the masses, who, afraid to declare their damnable doctrines 
openly, were rejoiced in any way to undermine the authority of the 
priesthood, and whose views were in accordance with those now 
broached on the subject of marriage. 1 While these motives would 
urge forward the serious portion of the citizens, the unthinking 
rabble would naturally be prompt to embrace any cause which 
promised a prospect of disturbance and plunder. Party lines were 
quickly drawn, and if the reformers were able to revive a forgotten 
scandal by stigmatizing their opponents as Nicolites, the party of the 
clergy and the nobles had their revenge, i The meetings of Landolfo 
and Arialdo were held in a spot called Pataria, whence they soon 



1 Milan long retained its bad pre- 
eminence as a nest of heresy. When 
Frederic II., in 1236, delayed his pro- 
mised crusade to subdue the rebellious 
Milanese, his excuse to the pope was 
that he ought not to leave behind him 
unbelievers worse than those whom he 
would seek across the seas. " Cum 
. . . jam zizania segetes incipiant suf- 
focare per civitates Italicas, praecipue 
Mediolanensium, transire ad Saracenos 



hostiliter expugnandos, et illos incor- 
rectos pertransire, esset vulnus infixo 
ferro fomentis superficialibus delinire, 
et cicatricem deformam non medelam 
procurare," and Matthew Paris calls 
Milan " omnium hsereticorum, Pate- 
rinorum, Luciferanorum, Publicano- 
rum, Albigensium, Usurariorum re- 
fugium ac receptaculum. " — Hist. Angl. 
ann. 1236. 



212 



MILAN. 



became known as Paterins — a term which for centuries continued to 
be of fearful import, as synonymous with Manichseans. 1 

Matters could not long remain in this condition. During an 
altercation in the church of San Celso, a hot-headed priest assaulted 
Arialdo, whom Landolfo extricated from the crowd at considerable 
personal risk. Thereupon the reformers called the people together 
in the theatre; inflammatory addresses speedily wrought up the 
popular passions to ungovernable fury ; the priests were turned out 
of the churches, their houses sacked, their persons maltreated, and 
they were finally obliged to purchase a suspension of oppression by 
subscribing a paper binding themselves to chastity. The nobles, far 
from being able to protect the clergy, finding themselves also in 
danger, sought safety in flight; while the rabble, having exhausted 
the support derivable from intramural plunder, spread over the 
country and repeated in the villages the devastations of priestly 
property which they had committed in Milan. 2 

The suffering clergy applied for relief to the bishops of the 
province, and finding none, at length appealed to Rome itself. 
Stephen IX., who then filled the papal chair, authorized the arch- 
bishop to hold a synod for the purpose of restoring peace. It met, 
in the early part of 1058, at Fontaneto, near Novara. The prelates 
were unanimous in sustaining their clergy, and the reformers 
Landolfo and Arialdo were excommunicated without a dissentient 
voice. They disregarded the interdict, however, redoubled their 
efforts with the people, whom they bound by a solemn oath to 
adhere to the sacred cause, and even forced the priests to join in the 
compact. Arialdo then proceeded to Rome, where he developed in 
full the objects of the movement, and pointed out that it would not 
only result in restoring purity and discipline, but might also be used 
to break down the dangerous independence of the Ambrosian church 
and reduce it to the subjection which it owed and refused to the 



1 Arnulf. Gest. Archiep. Mediolan. 
Lib. in. c. 9. — Landulf. Sen. Lib. in. 
c. 10. 

Benzo, the uncompromising im- 
perialist, always alludes to the papal 
party when he speaks of the Patarini 
— that term not having yet assumed 
the significance which it subsequently 
obtained. He accuses Anselmo di 
Badagio of being the author of the 
troubles — " primitus Patariam invenit, 



arcanum domini sui archiepiscopi cui 
juraverat inimicis aperuit. Abusus est 
etiam quadam monacha, cum Landul- 
fino suo proprio consobrino." — Com- 
ment, de Keb. Henric. IV. Lib. vn. c. 
2. — The latter accusation can no doubt 
be set down as one of the baseless 
scandals so freely cast from one party 
to the other in those turbulent times. 



2 Arnulf. Lib. in. c. 10. 
Sen. Lib. in. c. 9. 



-Landulf. 



DAMIANI IN MILAN. 213 

Apostolic see. The arguments were convincing, the excommunica- 
tion was removed, and Arialdo returned to his work with zeal more 
fiery than ever. 1 

Meanwhile the nobles had taken heart and offered armed resistance 
to the Patarian faction, resulting in incessant fights and increasing 
bloodshed. Nicholas II., who by this time had succeeded Stephen 
IX., sent Hildebrand and Anselmo di Badagio on a mission to 
Milan, with instructions to allay the passions which led to such 
deplorable results, and, while endeavoring to uphold the rules of 
discipline, to pacify if possible the people, and to arrange such a basis 
of reconciliation as might restore peace to the distracted church. 
The milder Anselmo might perhaps have succeeded in this errand of 
charity, but the unbending Hildebrand was not likely to listen to 
aught but unconditional subjection to the canons and to Rome. The 
quarrel therefore waxed fiercer and deadlier; the turmoil became 
more inextricable as daily combats embittered both parties, and the 
missionaries departed, leaving Guido with scarcely a shadow of 
authority over his rebellious city, and the seeds of discord more 
widely scattered and more deeply planted than ever. 2 

Again, in 1059, a papal legation was sent with full authority 
to force the recalcitrant clergy to submission. Anselmo again 
returned to his native city, accompanied this time by Peter Damiani. 
Their presence and their pretensions caused a fearful tumult, in which 
Damiani and Landolfo were in deadly peril. 3 An assembly was at 
length held, where the legates asserted the papal preeminence by 
taking the place of honor, to the general indignation of the Milanese, 
who did not relish the degradation of their archbishop before the 
'representatives of a foreign prelate. The question in debate hinged 
upon the authority of Rome, which was stoutly denied by the 
Lombards. 4 Peter, in a long oration, showed that Rome had christian- 
ized the rest of Western Europe, and that St. Ambrose himself had 
invoked the papal power as superior to his own. The pride of the 



1 Arnulf. Lib. in. c. 11. 

2 Landulf. Sen. Lib. in. c. 13. 

3 "Quod Mediolanensis ci vitas tunc 
in seditionem versa, repentinum utique 
nostrum minabatur interitum." — The 
peril must have been serious, for even 
Landolfo, whose nerves were seasoned 
by constant civic strife, made a vow to 



his delay in fulfilling which, after the 
danger was past, called foith the urgent 
remonstrances of Damiani. — Damiani 
Opusc. xlii. cap. 1. 

4 Their defence was "non debere 
Ambrosianam ecclesiam Romanis legi- 
bus subjacere, nullumque judicandi vel 
disponendi jus Eomano pontifici in ilia 



Scomo a monk ifhe ' S h7uld escape^ sede competere.-Damiani Opusc. y. 



214 



MILAN. 



Ambrosian church gave way, and the supremacy of St. Peter was 
finally acknowledged. This granted, the rest followed as a matter of 
course, and the heretical errors of simony and marriage had to be 
abandoned. Peter thought himself merciful in his triumph; where 
-all alike were guilty, punishment for the past became impossible, and 
he restricted himself to provisions for the future. The archbishop 
and his clergy signed a paper expressing their contrition in the most 
humiliating terms, and binding themselves and their successors, under 
penalty of eternal damnation, to render simony thereafter unknown. 
As regards the Nicolitan heresy, a significant caution was observed, 
for its extirpation was only promised in as far as it should be found 
possible; 1 and when Arnolfo, the nephew of Guido, swore for his 
uncle that in future monks should be the only persons ordained 
without a preliminary oath that no money had been paid or received, 
it is observable that the maintenance of chastity was discreetly 
passed over. Then the archbishop and his clergy swore, in the 
hands of Damiani at the altar, their faithful observance of the pledge 
to destroy the simoniacal and Nicolitan heresies, under penalties the 
most tremendous; and Guido prostrating himself on the ground, 
humbly deplored his negligence in the past, imposed on himself a 
penitence of a hundred years (redeemable at a certain sum per 
annum), and vowed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella to atone 
for his sin. Not content with this, Damiani mounted the pulpit and 
made both priests and people take an oath to extirpate both heresies ; 
and the clergy, before being reconciled to the church and restored to 
the positions which they had forfeited by their contumacy, were 
forced individually under oath to anathematize all heresies, and 
especially those of simony and marriage. A penance was imposed 
on every one involved in simony — no allusion being made to those 
who were married ; some, who were manifestly unfit for their sacred 
duties, were suspended, and the legates returned, after triumphantly 
accomplishing the objects of their mission. 2 



1 Nicolaitarum quoque hseresim ni- 
hilominus condemnamus, et non modo 
presbyteros sed et diaconos et subdia- 
conos ab uxorum et concubinarum faedo 
consortio, nostris studiis, in quantum 
nobis possibilitas fuerit, sub eodem quo 
supra testimonio arcendos esse promit- 
timus. — Damiani Opusc. v. 



2 Damiani op. cit. — Damiani 's ac- 
count is addressed to the pope, who, he 
seems to think, may be dissatisfied with 
the lenity which permitted heretics to 
return to the church on such easy terms, 
and he is at some pains to justify him- 
self for his mildness. 



RENEWAL OF CIVIL WAR. 



215 



If Damiani fancied that argumentative subtlety and paper promises, 
even though solemnly given in the name of God and all his saints, 
were to settle a question involving the fiercest passions of men, the 
cloistered saint knew little of human nature. The pride of the 
Milanese was deeply wounded by a subjection to Rome, unknown for 
many generations, and ill endured by men who gloried in the ancient 
dignity of the Ambrosian church. When, therefore, in 1061, their 
townsman, Anselmo di Badagio, was elevated from the episcopate of 
Lucca to that of the Holy See, Milan, in common with the rest 
of Lombardy, eagerly embraced the cause of the anti-pope Cadalus. 
One of Anselmo's earliest acts as pope was to address a letter to the 
Milanese, affectionately exhorting them to amendment, and expressing 
a hope that his pontificate was to witness the extinction of the 
heresies which had distracted and degraded the church. 1 He could 
scarcely have entertained the confidence which he expressed, for 
though Landolfo and Arialdo endeavored, with unabated zeal, to 
enforce the canons, the Nicolitan faction, regardless of the pledges 
given to Damiani, maintained the contest with equal stubbornness. 
Landolfo, on a mission to Rome, was attacked at Piacenza, wounded, 
and forced to return. Soon after this he was prostrated by a pulmo- 
nary affection, lost his voice, and died after a lingering illness of two 
years. 2 The Paterins, thus deprived of their leader, found another 
in the person of his brother, Erlembaldo, just then returned from a 
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Gifted with every knightly accom- 
plishment, valiant in war, sagacious in council, of a commanding 
presence, and endowed with eloquence to sway the passions of the 
multitude, he was the impersonation of a popular leader; while, in 
the cause to which he was now called, his deep religious convictions 
lent an attraction which was heightened by an unpardonable personal 
wrong — for, early in life, he had been betrothed to a young girl, who 
fell under the seductive wiles of an unprincipled priest. Yet 
Erlembaldo did not embark in civil strife without a hesitation which 
reflects honor on his character. He refused, at first, but was 
persuaded to seek counsel of the pope. Arialdo accompanied him to 
Rome, and urged Alexander to adopt him as military leader in the 
war against sacerdotal marriage. Alexander, too, shrank from 
the responsibility of authorizing war in such a cause, but Arialdo 



1 Alexand. II. Epist. 1. 

2 His followers claimed for him the 
honors of martyrdom. He was reve- 



renced accordingly, and Muratori 
gravely asserts that the evidence in his 
favor is induhitable. 



216 



MILAN 



sought the assistance of Hildebrand, and the scruples of the pope 
were removed by the prospect of asserting the authority of Rome. 
When Erlembaldo heard the commands of the Vicegerent of God, 
and received a sacred banner to be borne through the expected 
battles, he could no longer doubt as to his duty. He accepted the 
mission, and to it he devoted his life. 1 

Returning to Milan with this sanction, the zeal and military 
experience of Erlembaldo soon made themselves felt. He enrolled 
secretly all the young men whom persuasion, threats, or promises 
could induce to follow his standard, and thus supported by an organ- 
ized body, he endeavored to enforce the decretals inhibiting simony 
and marriage. All recalcitrant priests presuming to officiate were 
torn from the altars. The riots, which seem to have ceased for a 
time, became, with varying fortune, more numerous and alarming 
than ever, and the persecution of the clergy was greatly intensified. 
Guido, at length, after vainly endeavoring to uphold and protect the 
sacerdotal body, was driven from the city, and the popular reformers 
seemed at last to have carried their point, after a civil war which 
had now lasted, with short intervals, for nearly ten years. 2 

As though to confirm the victory, Arialdo, in 1066, at a council 
held in Rome, procured the excommunication of his archbishop, 
Guido, with which he returned triumphantly to Milan. Some 
popular revolution among the factions, however, had brought Guido 
back to the city, where he maintained a precarious position. Dis- 
regarding the excommunication, he resolved to officiate in the solemn 
services of Pentecost (June 4th, 1066), and, braving all opposition, 
he appeared at the altar. Excited to fury at this unexpected con- 
tumacy, the popular party, led on by Erlembaldo and Arialdo, 
attacked him in the church ; his followers rallied in his defence, but, 
after a stubborn fight, were forced to leave him in the hands of his 
enemies, by whom he was beaten nearly to death. Shocked by this 



1 Arnulf. Lib. in. c. 13, 14. — Lan- 
dolf. Sen. Lib. in. c. 13, 14. 

To this period may probably be at- 
tributed two epistles of Alexander II. 
(Epistt. 93, 94) to the clergy and people 
of Milan, informing both parties that a 
Eoman synod had recently prohibited 
incontinent priests from officiating, and 
had ordered the people not to attend at 
their ministrations. He adds that those 
who abandon their functions to cleave 



to their wives, must be forced also to 
give up their benefices. 

2 Arnulf. Lib. in. c. 15. — Landulf. 
Sen. Lib. in. c. 15. — Arnulfus alludes 
to a dispute concerning the litany, 
which complicated the quarrel. The 
troubles even invaded the monasteries, 
for Erlembaldo procured the forcible 
ejection of sundry abbots appointed by 
Guido. 



THE TKOUBLES CONTINUE. 



217 



outrage, many of the citizens abandoned the party of the reformers, 
and the nobles, taking advantage of the revulsion of feeling, again 
had the ascendency. Arialdo was obliged to fly for his life, and 
endeavored to conceal himself, travelling only by night. The 
avengers were close upon his track, however ; he was betrayed by a 
priest, and the satellites of Guido carried him to an island in Lago 
Maggiore, where (June 27th, 1066) they put him to death, with all 
the refinement of cruelty. A series of miracles prevented the 
attempted concealment of the martyred corpse, and ten months later 
Erlembaldo recovered it, fresh and untouched by corruption. Carried 
to Milan, it was interred with stately pomp in the monastery of San 
Celso, where the miracles wrought at his tomb proclaimed the sanctity 
of him who had died for the faith, and ere long his canonization 
formally enrolled St. Arialdo among the saints of Heaven. 1 

Erlembaldo for a while remained quiet, but in secret he recon- 
structed his party, and, undaunted by the fate of his associate, he 
suddenly renewed the civil strife. Successful at first, he forced the 
clergy to bind themselves by fresh oaths, and expelled Guido again 
from the city ; but the clerical party recovered its strength, and the 
war was carried on with varying fortune, until, in 1067, Alexander 
II. despatched another legation with orders to harmonize, if possible, 
the endless strife. Cardinals Mainardo and Minuto appear to have 
been sincerely desirous of reconciling the angry factions. They pro- 
claimed an amnesty and promulgated a constitution which protected 
the clergy from abuse and persecution, and though they decreed sus- 
pension for married and concubinary priests, they required that none 
should be punished on suspicion, and laid down such regulations for 
trial as gave great prospect of immunity. 2 There must have been 
pressing necessity for some such regulations, if we may believe the 
assertion of Landolfo that when Erlembaldo found his funds running 
low he appointed thirty judges to examine all ecclesiastics in holy 



1 Arnulf. Lib. in. c. 18.— Landulf. 
Lib. in. c. 29. In 1090 the remains 
of St. Arialdo were translated by Arch- 
bishop Anselmo IV. to the church of 
St. Denis, and Muratori quotes from 
Alciati a curious statement to the effect 
that in 1508 Louis XII. removed them 
to Paris in mistake for the relics of St. 
Denis the Areopagite, the Parisians in 
his time still venerating them as those 
of the latter saint. 

About the time of Arialdo 's martyr- 



dom, Cremona must have been won 
over to the cause of the reformers, for 
in 1066 we find Alexander II. address- 
ing the ' ' religiosis clericis et fidelibus 
laicis " of that city, thanking God that 
they had been moved to extirpate the 
simoniacal and ISTicolitan heresies, and 
commanding that in future all those in 
orders who contaminated themselves 
with women should be degraded. — 
Alex. II. Epist. 36. 

2 Arnulf. Lib. in. c. 18, 19. 



218 MILAN. 

orders. Those who could not procure twelve conjurators to swear 
with them on the Gospels as to their immaculate purity since ordi- 
nation, had all their property confiscated. At the same time the 
rabble used to prowl around at night and throw female ornaments 
and articles of apparel into priests' houses ; then, breaking open the 
doors, they would proclaim the criminality of the inmates, and 
plunder everything that they could lay their hands on. 1 

Moderate men of both parties, wearied with the unceasing strife, 
eagerly hailed the accommodation proposed by the papal legates, 
and rejoiced at the prospect of peace. Erlembaldo, however, was 
dissatisfied, and, visiting Rome, soon aroused a fresh cause of 
quarrel. At the suggestion of Hildebrand he started the portentous 
question of investitures, and on his return he endeavored to force 
both clergy and laity to take an oath that in future their archbishops 
should apply to the pope, and not to the emperor, for confirmation — 
thus securing a chief devoted to the cause of reform. Guido sought 
to anticipate this movement, and, in 1069, old and wearied with the 
unending contention, he resigned his archbishopric to the subdeacon 
Gotefrido, who had long been his principal adviser. The latter pro- 
cured his confirmation from Henry IV., but the Milanese, defrauded 
of their electoral privileges, refused to acknowledge him. Erlem- 
baldo was not slow to take advantage of the popular feeling ; a 
tumult was readily excited, and Gotefrido was glad to escape at night 
from the rebellious city. Guido added fresh confusion by asserting 
that he had been deceived by Gotefrido, and by endeavoring to re- 
sume his see. To this end he made a treaty with Erlembaldo, but 
that crafty chieftain, obtaining possession of his person, imprisoned 
him in the monastery of San Celso, and then proceeded to besiege 
Gotefrido in Castiglione. The new archbishop defended himself 
bravely, until, in 1071, Erlembaldo was forced to abandon the 
enterprise. 2 

Meanwhile another aspirant, Azzo, installed by Erlembaldo, fared 
no better than his rivals. The people, unbidden guests, rushed in to 
his inaugural banquet, unearthed him in the corner where he had 
hidden himself, dragged him by the heels into the street, and, placing 
him in a pulpit, forced him to swear that he would make no further 
pretensions to the see ; while the papal legate, who had presided 



1 Landulf. Sen. Lib. in. c. 20. 

2 Arnulf. Lib. in. c. 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.— Landulf. Sen. Lib. in. c. 28. 



THREE RIVAL ARCHBISHOPS. 



219 



over the solemnities, was glad to escape with his life. Azzo, however, 
was recognized by Rome ; he was released from the obligation of his 
oath, and money was furnished to enable him to maintain his quarrel. 
On the other hand, Henry IV. sent assistance to Gotefrido, which 
enabled him to carry on the campaign with some vigor ; but he was 
unable to obtain a foothold in Milan. Azzo fled to Borne, and the 
city remained without an archbishop and under an interdict launched 
in 1074 by Hildebrand, who, in April, 1073, had succeeded to 
Alexander II. 1 

The Milanese were disposed to disregard the interdict, while 
Erlembaldo, who now held undisputed command of the city — and, 
indeed, of almost all Lombardy — used every effort to enforce respect 
for it. At length, at Easter, 1075, he resolutely prevented the 
solemnization of the sacred rites, and cast out the holy chrism which 
the priests had persisted in preparing. This roused the populace to 
resistance ; both parties flew to arms, and, at the very commence- 
ment of the fray, Erlembaldo fell mortally wounded under the shade 
of the papal banner, which was still the emblem of his cause, and in 
virtue of which he was canonized as a saintly martyr to the faith. 
The Milanese, sinking all past animosities, united in promptly 
sending an embassy to Henry IV. to congratulate him on the death 
of the common enemy, and to request the appointment of another 
archbishop. To this he responded by nominating Tedaldo, who was 
duly consecrated, notwithstanding the pretensions of his competitors, 
Gotefrido and Azzo. Tedaldo was the leader of the disaffected 
bishops who, at the synod of Pavia, in 1076, excommunicated Pope 
Gregory himself; and though, after the interview at Canosa, in 
1077, the Lombards, disgusted with Henry's voluntary humiliation 
before that papal power which they had learned to despise, aban- 
doned the imperialists for a time, yet Tedaldo kept his seat until his 
death in 1085, notwithstanding the repeated excommunications 
launched against him by Gregory. 2 



In the later years of this long and bloody controversy, it is evident 
that the political element greatly complicated the religious ground of 



1 Arnulf. Lib. in. c. 23 ; Lib. iv. c. 
2, 3, 4. 

2 Arnulf. Lib. iv., Lib. v. c. 2, 5, 9. 
— Landulf. Sen. Lib. in. c. 29, Lib. iv. 
c. 2. — Lambert. Schafnab. ann. 1077. 



Erlembaldo was canonized by Urban 
II. towards the end of the century. 
Muratori (Annal. ann. 1085) styles 
Tedaldo " capo e colonna maestra degli 
Scismatici di Lombardia." 



220 MILAN. 

quarrel — that pope and emperor without made use of burgher and 
noble within, and the latter took sides, as respects simony and sacer- 
dotal marriage, to further the ends of individual ambition. Still, the 
disputed points of discipline were the ostensible causes of the struggle, 
whatever might be the private aims of civic factions, or of imperial 
and papal rivals ; and these points gave a keener purpose to the 
strife, and furnished an inexhaustible supply of recruits to each con- 
tending faction. Thus, about the year 1070, a conference took place 
at Milan between priests deputed by both sides, in which the question 
of marriage was argued as earnestly as though it were the source of 
all the intestine troubles. 1 So when, in 1073, Gregory, shortly after 
his accession, addressed letters to Erlembaldo urging him to persevere 
in the good work, and to the Lombard bishops commanding them to 
assist him, the object of his labors is assumed to be the extirpation 
of simony and the restoration of the clergy to the purity becoming 
their sacred office. 2 And when, in 1076, the schismatic bishops, 
under the lead of Tedaldo of Milan, met in council at Pavia to 
renounce all obedience to Gregory, one of the articles of accusation 
brought against him was that he separated husbands and wives, and 
preferred licentiousness to marriage, thus giving, in their grounds of 
complaint against him, especial prominence to his zeal for the intro- 
duction of celibacy. 3 

Yet at last the question of sacerdotal marriage sank out of sight 
when the civil broils of Milan merged into the European quarrel 
between the empire and papacy. When, in 1093, Henry IV. was 
driven out of Italy by the revolt of his son Conrad, and the latter 
was created King of Lombardy by Urban II. and the Countess 
Matilda, the dependence of the young king upon the pope rendered 
impossible any further open defiance of the laws of the church, and 
public marriage there, as elsewhere, was doubtless replaced by secret 
immorality. 4 The triumph of the sacerdotal party was consummated 



1 Landulf. Sen. Lib. in. c. 21, 22 
23, 24, 25. 



4 To this period is no doubt referable 
a fragment of a decretal addressed by- 
Urban II. to Anselmo, Archbishop of 
Milan, giving him instructions as to 
the ceremony of restoring to the church 

i the ecclesiastics who were to be recon- 
* Maritc* ab uxonbus separat ; M (I Decret p VI c 407 _ 

scorta pudicis conjugibus; stupra, in- ^ b \ n E . 74 )_showins that 

cestus, adultena, casto prsefert con- | „., , , S11 WW. and t.h 



2 G-regor. II. Eegist. Lib. I. Epistt 
25, 26, 27. 



nubio ; populares adversus sacerdotes, 



Milan had submitted, and that her 
clergy were forced to seek absolution 



vulgus adversum episcopos concitat. | and ^ bev the canons> It was this revo 

7"°*°™ ^T enS ' ann ' ( ^tion in Lombardy that drove the 

dast. 111. d!4). | anti . pope Clement III. from Rome. 



STUBBORNNESS OF NICOLITISM. 



221 



at the great council of Piacenza, held by Urban II. in February, 
1095, to which prelates nocked from every part of Europe, and the 
people gathered in immense numbers. If, as the chronicler informs 
us, four thousand ecclesiastics and thirty thousand laymen assembled 
on the occasion, and the sessions were held in the open air because 
no building could contain the thronging masses, we may reasonably 
attribute so unprecedented an assemblage to the wild religious ardor 
which was about to culminate in the first Crusade. That council 
condemned Nicolitism in the most absolute and peremptory manner, 
and there is no reason to believe that the power of so formidable a 
demonstration was lightly disregarded. 1 Yet in Milan, as we shall 
see elsewhere throughout Europe, the custom of sacerdotal marriage 
had become so thoroughly established that it could not be eradicated 
suddenly. It continued to survive stubbornly after every attempt at 
repression with more or less openness as the persecution of married 
priests was more or less severe. A synod held in Milan in 1098 is 
discreetly silent as to wedlock or concubinage among ecclesiastics, 
though it is severe upon the concurrent vice of simony, and though 
its prohibition of hereditary succession in church benefices and dig- 
nities would show that marriage among their incumbents must have 
been by no means infrequent. Moreover, even as late as 1152, 
Mainerio Boccardo, a canon of Monza, in his will specifies that cer- 
tain provisions for the benefit of his brother canons shall not be 
enjoyed by those who are married, thus proving that the Hildebran- 
dine reforms had not yet been successful, though Rome had long 
since attained its object in breaking down the independence of the 
Ambrosian church. 2 



It is not to be supposed that the story of Milan is an exceptional 
one. Perhaps the factions there were fiercer, and the contest more 
prolonged, than elsewhere; but the same causes were at work in 
other Italian cities, and were attended with results similar in char- 
acter, if differing in intensity. In Lucca, for instance, in 1051, we 



1 Item heresis Nicolaitarum, id est 
incontinentmm subdiaconorum, dia- 
conorum et prsecipue sacerdotum inre- 
tractabiliter damnata est, ut deinceps 
de officio se non intromittant qui in 
ilia heresi manere non formidant ; 
nee populus eorum officia ullo modo 
recipiat, si ipsi Nicolaitae contra hsec 



interdicta ministrare praesumant. — 
Bernald. Constant, ann. 1095. 

The very terms of this canon, how- 
ever, show that "Nicolitism" was still 
an existing fact. 

2 Tamburini, Storia generale delP 
Inquizione, Milano, 1862, T. I. pp. 
307-9. 



222 



MILAN. 



find Leo IX., when confirming the possessions of the canons of the 
cathedral church of St. Martin, expressing the hope that God would 
liberate them from their married priests, who dissipated the property 
of the foundation, while utterly unworthy of partaking of the divine 
oblation. 1 His desire that they would live in concord and harmony 
with their bishop was, however, not destined to be long gratified. 
When St. Anselmo, in 1073, accepted the episcopate at the urgent 
request of his friend, Gregory VII., he labored for years to reform 
the dissolute lives of his clergy, until at length finding threats and 
expostulations alike ineffectual, he implored the intervention of the 
Countess Matilda. Even the sovereign of Tuscany was unable to 
accomplish the submission of the recalcitrant ecclesiastics, and in 
1074 St. Anselmo took advantage of the presence of Gregory VII. 
in the city to invoke his interposition. The resolute pope, finding 
his personal efforts fruitless, summoned the offenders to trial before 
a court of bishops, presided over by the celebrated Pietro Igneo, 
Bishop of Albano. Being condemned and excommunicated, they 
resisted by force of arms, excited a rebellion in the city, drove out 
St. Anselmo, and joined the imperialists ; and when, in 1081, Gui- 
berto the anti-pope came to Italy, he consecrated their leader, a sub- 
deacon named Pietro, as bishop, in place of the exiled martyr. 2 In 
Piacenza, the schismatics were guilty of excesses more deplorable, 
for, not content with deposing Bonizo, who had been set over them 
as bishop, they gave him the fullest honors of martyrdom by pluck- 
ing out his eyes and then cutting him to pieces. 3 Similar troubles 
occurred in Parma, Modena, Reggio, and Pistoia, and it was not 
until the death of their respective schismatic bishops that the 
Countess Matilda was able to recover her authority in those places. 



1 S. Leon. IX. Epist. 55. 

2 Vit. S. Anselmi Lucensis. — In his 
collection of canons, St. Anselmo is 
careful to accumulate authorities jus- 



tifying his course, and condemning 
his antagonists. — S. Anselmi Collect. 
Canon. Lib. vin. c. 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10. 

3 Bernald. Constant, ann. 1089. 



XIV. 
HILDEBRAND. 



Alexandee II. died April 21st, 1073, and within twenty-four 
hours the Archdeacon Hildebrand was elected as his successor — a 
promptitude and unanimity which showed the general recognition of 
his fitness for the high office. For more than twenty years he had 
been the power behind the throne which had directed and given pur- 
pose to the policy of Rome, and the assertion of his biographers that 
his disinclination for the position had alone prevented his previous 
elevation may readily be believed. Whether he was forced on the 
present occasion to assent to the choice of the conclave, against his 
earnest resistance, is, however, more problematical. 

Hildebrand was the son of a poor carpenter of Soano, and had 
been trained in the ascetic monachism of Cluny. Gifted by nature 
with rare sagacity, unbending will, and indomitable spirit, imbued 
with the principles of the False Decretals, and firmly believing in 
the wildest pretensions of ecclesiastical supremacy, he had conceived 
a scheme of hierarchical autocracy, which he regarded not only as 
the imprescriptible right of the church, but also as the perfection of 
human institutions. To the realization of this ideal he devoted his 
life with a fiery zeal and unshaken purpose that shrank from no 
obstacles, and to it he was ready to sacrifice not only the men who 
stood in his path, but also the immutable principles of truth and 
justice. All considerations were as dross compared with the one 
object, and his own well-being and life were ventured as recklessly 
as the peace of the world. 

Such a man could comprehend the full importance of the rule of 
celibacy, not alone as essential to the ascetic purity of the church, 
but as necessary to the theocratic structure which he proposed to 
elevate on the ruins of kingdoms and empires. The priest must be 
a man set apart from his fellows, consecrated to the one holy purpose, 



224 



HILDEBRAND. 



reverenced by the world as a being superior to human passions and 
frailties, devoted, soul and body, to the interests of the church, and 
distracted by no temporal cares and anxieties foreign to the welfare 
of the great corporation of which he was a member. We have seen 
the strenuous efforts which, for a quarter of a century, successive 
pontiffs had unceasingly made to accomplish this reform, and we have 
also seen how fruitlessly those efforts were expended on the passive 
or active resistance of the priesthood. When Hildebrand took the 
reins into his vigorous grasp, the change at once became manifest, 
and the zeal of his predecessors appears lukewarm by comparison. 
He had had ample leisure to note how inefficient was the ordinary 
machinery to accomplish the result, and he hesitated not to call to 
his assistance external powers ; to give to the secular princes 
authority over ecclesiastics at which enthusiastic churchmen stood 
aghast, and to risk apparently the most precious immunities of the 
church to secure the result. The end proved his wisdom, for the 
power delegated to the laity for a special object was readily recalled, 
after it had served its purpose, and the rebellious clerks were subdued 
and rendered fit instruments in the lapse of time for humiliating 
their temporary masters. In one respect, however, Hildebrand' s 
policy proved a blunder. The faithful readily submitted to the 
restoration of clerical immunity, but the idea that ecclesiastics for- 
feited their privileges by sin became a favorite one with almost all 
heretics, as we shall see hereafter in the case of the Albigenses, 
Waldenses, Wickliffites, and Hussites, costing the church many a 
desperate struggle. 

To Gregory, as we must hereafter call him, was generally at- 
tributed, by his immediate successors, the honor of introducing, or of 
enforcing, the absolute chastity of the ministers of the altar. Some 
chroniclers mention Alexander II. or Leo IX. as participating in the 
struggle, but to his vigorous management its success was popularly 
conceded. 1 He earned the tribute thoroughly, for during his whole 



1 Cujus prudentia, non solum in 
Italia sed etiam in Theutonicis parti- 
bus refrenata est sacerdotum incon- 
tinentia, scilicet quod prsedecessores 
ejus in Italia prohibuerunt, hoc ipse in 
aliis ecclesise catholicse partibus pro- 
hibere studiosus attemptavit. — Bertold. 
Constant, ann. 1073.— Also Bernald. 
Constant, ann. 1073. 

Gregorius . . . connubia clericorum 



a subdiaconatu et supra, per totum 
orbem Komanum edicto decretal i, in 
seternum prohibuit. — G-otefrid. Yiterb. 
Chron. P. xvn. 

Sed et datis decretis clericorum a 
subdiaconatu et supra connubia in 
toto orbe Romano cohibuit. — Otton. 
Frisingen. Cbron. Lib. vi. c. 34. 

Eodem quoque tempore canones an- 
tiqui de continentia ministrorum sacri 



NECESSITY OF CELIBACY. 



225 



pontificate it seems to have been ever present to his thoughts, and 
whatever were his preoccupations in his fearful struggle with the 
empire, on which he risked the present and the future of the papacy, 
he always had leisure to attend to the one subject in its minutest 
details and in the remotest corner of Christendom. 

Perhaps in this there may have been an unrecognized motive 
urging him to action. Sprung from so humble an origin, he may 
have sympathized with the democratic element, which rendered the 
church the only career open to peasant and plebeian. He may have 
felt that this was a source of hidden power, as binding the popula- 
tions more closely to the church, and as enabling it to press into 
service an unknown amount of fresh and vigorous talent belonging 
to men who would owe everything to the establishment which had 
raised them from nothingness, and who would have no relationships 
to embarrass their devotion. All this would be lost if, by legalizing 
marriage, the hereditary transmission of benefices inevitably resulting 
should convert the church into a separate caste of individual pro- 
prietors, having only general interests in common, and lazily lux- 
uriating on the proceeds of former popular beneficence. To us, 
retrospectively philosophizing, it further appears evident that if 
celibacy were an efficient agent in obtaining for the church the 
immense temporal power and spiritual authority which it enjoyed, 
that very power and that authority rendered celibacy a necessity to 
the welfare of civilization. When even the humblest priest came to 
be regarded as a superior being, holding the keys of heaven in his 
hand, and by the machinery of confession, absolution, and excom- 
munication wielding incalculable influence over each member of his 
flock, it was well for both parties that the ecclesiastic should be free 
from the ties of family and the vulgar ambition of race. It is easy 



altaris innovari novis accedentibus 
prasceptis coeperunt, per hunc Urba- 
num Papam et prsedecessores suos 
Gregorium VII. et Nicholaum II. 
atque Alexandrum II. — Chron. Reich- 
ersperg. ann. 1098. 

Tempore illo cum Gregorius qui et 
Hiltebrant Romani pontificatus jura 
disponeret, hoc decretum quidem an- 
tiquitus promulgatum, nunc autem in- 
novatum est, ut videlicet omnes in 
sacris ordinibus constituti, presbyteri 
scilicet et diaconi, a cobabitationibus 
feminarum se, ut decet, cohiberent, 
aut ab officio cessarent. — G-est. Trevir. 



Archiep. cap. xxx. (Martene Ampliss. 
Collect. IV. 174). 

Hoc tamen ab eo tempore fuit intro- 
ductum ut nullus ordinaretur in pres- 
byterum conjugatus : et ordinandi 
omnes castitatem promittere compel- 
lantur coram ordinante. — Chron. Hir- 
saug. ann. 1074. 

One chronicler, however, attributes 
the reform to Alexander II. " Con- 
stituit etiam ut nullus presbyter sive 
diaconus vel subdiaconus, uxorem ha- 
beatj sive concubinam in occidentali 
ecclesia, sed ut sint casti." — Chron. S. 
iEgid. in Brunswig, ann. 1071. 



15 



226 HILDEBRAND. 

to see how the churchmen could have selected matrimonial alliances 
of the most politic and aggrandizing character ; and as possession of 
property and hereditary transmission of benefices would have neces- 
sarily followed on the permission to marry, an ecclesiastical caste, 
combining temporal and spiritual power in the most dangerous excess, 
would have repeated in Europe the distinctions between the Brahman 
and Sudra of India. The perpetual admission of self-made men into 
the hierarchy, which distinguished the church even in times of the 
most aristocratic feudalism, was for ages the only practical recog- 
nition of the equality of man, and was one of the most powerful 
causes at work during the Middle Ages to render rational liberty 
eventually possible with advancing civilization. Looking therefore 
upon the church as an instrumentality to effect certain beneficent 
results in the course of human improvement, we may regard celibacy 
as a necessary element of sacerdotalism, the abolition of which would 
have required the entire destruction of the papal system and the 
fundamental reconstruction of ecclesiastical institutions. 

What we may now readily discern to have been a means, to 
Gregory, however, was an end, and to the enforcement of celibacy as 
necessary to that object he devoted himself with unrelenting vigor. 
The belief that he was appointed of God, and set apart for the task 
of cleansing the church of the Nicolitan heresy which had defied his 
predecessors is well illustrated by the contemporary legend of some 
pious Pisans, who, spending the night before his election in prayer 
in the basilica of St. Peter, saw that holy saint himself traverse the 
church accompanied by Hildebrand, whom he commanded to gather 
some droppings of mares with which the sacred edifice was defiled, to 
place them in a sack, and to carry them out on his shoulders. 1 The 
severe austerity of his virtue, moreover, was displayed by his 
admirers in the story that once, when dangerously ill, his niece came 
to inquire as to his health. To relieve her anxiety he played with 
her necklace, and jestingly asked if she wished to be married ; but 
on his recovery he found that he could no longer weep with due con- 
trition over his sins, and that he had lost the grace of repentance. 
He long and vainly searched for the cause, and finally entreated his 
friends to pray for him, when the Virgin appeared to one of them, 
and sent word to Gregory that he had fallen from grace in conse- 



1 Paul Bernried. Tit. Gregor VII. c. ii. (j 20. 



HIS FIRST EFFORTS 



227 



quence of the infraction of his vows committed in touching the 
necklace of his niece. 1 



His first movement on the subject appears to have been an epistle 
addressed in November, 1073, to Gebhardt Archbishop of Salzburg, 
taking him severely to task for his neglect in enforcing the canons 
promulgated not long before in Rome, and ordering him to carry 
them rigidly into effect among his clergy. 2 This, no doubt, was a 
circular letter addressed to all the prelates of Christendom, and it 
was but a preliminary step. Early in Lent of the next year (March, 
1074), he held his first synod, which adopted a canon prohibiting 
sacerdotal marriage, ordering that no one in future should be 
admitted to orders without a vow of celibacy, and renewing the legis- 
lation of Nicholas II. which commanded the people not to attend the 
ministrations of those whose lives were a violation of the rule. 3 
There was nothing in the terms of this more severe than what had 
been decreed in innumerable previous councils — indeed, it was by no 
means as threatening as many decretals of recent date ; but Gregory 
was resolved that it should not remain, like them, a mere protest, 
and he took immediate measures to have it enforced wherever the 
authority of Rome extended. 



1 Pauli Bernried. Vit. G-regor. VII. 
c. iii. \ 26. 

Even Gregory, however, was not 
equal to his contemporary Hugh, Bishop 
of Grenoble, who, during fifty-three 
years spent in the active duties of his 
calling, never saw the face of a woman, 
except that of an aged mendicant. — 
Eolevink Fascia Temp. ann. 1074. 

The fanciful purity which came to 
be considered requisite to the episcopal 
ofiice is well illustrated by the case of 
Faricius, Abbot of Abingdon, who was 
elected to the see of Canterbury. His 
suffragans refused his consecration be- 
cause he was a skilful leech — "tunc 
electus est Faricius ad archiepiscopa- 
tum, sed episcopus Lincolniensis et 
episcopus Salesburiensis obstiterunt, di- 
centes non debere archiepiscopum 
urinas mulierum inspicere" (De Abbat. 
Abbendon. — Chron. Abingdon. II. 
287). The prejudice against the prac- 
tice of physic as incompatible with the 
purity of an ecclesiastic was wide- 
spread and long-lived, as chronicled in 
the canons of numerous councils pro- 
hibiting it (e. g. Concil. Claromont. | 



ann. 1130 c. 5) — but it was not always 
so. In 998 Theodatus, a monk of 
Corvey, received the bishopric of 
Prague from Otho III., as a reward for 
curing Boleslas I., Duke of Bohemia, 
of paralysis, by means of a bath of 
wine, herbs, spices, and three living 
black puppies four weeks old (Paulini 
Dissert. Hist. p. 198) ; and about the 
year 1200, Hubert Walter, Archbishop 
of Canterbury, bestowed the see of St. 
David's on Geoffrey, Prior of Llanthony, 
his physician, whose skill had won his 
gratitude. — Girald. Cambrens. de Jur. 
et Stat. Menev. Eccles. Dist. vn. 

2 Gregor. VII. Regist. Lib. i. Epist. 
30. 

3 Ut secundum instituta antiquo- 
rum canonum presbyteri uxores non 
habeant, habentes aut dimittant aut 
deponantur ; nee quisquam omnino ad 
sacerdotium admittatur qui non in 
perpetuum continentiam vitamque 
coelibem profiteatur. — Lambert. Hers- 
feldens. ann. 1074. Cf. Gregor. Epist. 
Extrav. 4. 



228 



HILDEBEAND. 



The controversy as respects Italy has already been so fully 
described that to dilate upon it further would be superfluous. Even 
though Alexander II. in his later years had shrunk somewhat from 
the contest, yet from Naples to the Tyrol the question was thor- 
oughly understood, and its results depended more upon political 
revolutions than on ecclesiastical exertions. Beyond the Alps, how- 
ever, the efforts of preceding popes had thus far proved wholly nuga- 
tory, and on this field Gregory now bent all his energies. The new 
canon was sent to all the bishops of Europe, with instructions to 
promulgate it throughout their respective dioceses, and to see that 
it was strictly obeyed ; while legates were sent in every direction 
to support these commands with their personal supervision and 
exertion. 1 

That the course which Gregory thus adopted was essentially dif- 
ferent from that pursued by his predecessors is amply attested by the 
furious storm which these measures aroused. The clergy protested 
in the most energetic terms that they would rather abandon their 
calling than their wives ; they denounced Gregory as a madman and 
a heretic, who expected to compel men to live as angels, and who in 
his folly, while denying to natural affection its accustomed and proper 
gratification, would open the door to indiscriminate licentiousness ; 
and they tauntingly asked where, when he should have driven them 
from the priesthood, he expected to find the angels who were to 
replace them. 2 Even those who favored celibacy condemned the 
means adopted as injudicious, contrary to the canons, and leading to 
scandals more injurious to the church than the worst of heresies. 3 
Gregory paid little heed to threats or remonstrances, but sent legate 
after legate to accuse the bishops of their inertness, and to menace 
them with deposition if they should neglect to carry out the canon 
to the letter, and he accompanied these measures with others of even 
more practically efficient character. 



1 As regards Germany, Gregory, in 
1074, sent two legates to Henry IV., 
who promulgated the canon in a na- 
tional council ; and the next year he 
followed this up by a legation em- 
powered to forbid the laity from 
attending the offices of married priests. 
(Herman. Contract, ann. 1074-5.) 
His correspondence, however, shows 
that he did not rely alone on such 
measures, but that he also addressed 
the prelates directly. 



2 Lambert. Hersfeldens. ann. 1074. 

3 Novo exemplo et inconsiderato 
prejudicio, necnon et contra sanctorum 
patrum sententiam .... ex qua re 
tarn grave scandalum in ecclesia oritur, 
quod antea sancta ecclesia nullius hse- 
resis schismati tarn graviter est attrita. 
— Chron. Turonens. (Martene Ampl. 
Collect. V. 1007.) 



THREE BISHOPS — OTHO OF CONSTANCE. 229 

The bishops, in fact, were placed in a most embarrassing position, 
which may be understood from the adventures of three prelates, who 
took different positions with regard to the wishes of Gregory — Otho 
of Constance, who leaned to the side of the clergy ; St. Altmann of 
Passau, who was an enthusiastic papalist ; and Siegfrid of Mainz, 
who was a trimmer afraid of both parties. 

To Otho, Gregory, in 1074, sent the canons of the synod inhibit- 
ing marriage and simony, with orders to use every exertion to secure 
the compliance of his clergy. Otho apparently did not manifest 
much eagerness to undertake the unpopular task, and Gregory lost 
little time in calling him to account. Before the year expired, we 
find the pope addressing a second epistle to the bishop, angrily 
accusing him of disobedience in permitting the ministration of mar- 
ried priests, and summoning him to answer for his contumacy at a 
synod to be held in Rome during the approaching Lent. Nor was 
this all, for at the same time he wrote to the clergy and people of 
the diocese, informing them of the disobedience of their bishop and 
of his summons to trial, commanding them, in case of his persistent 
rebellion, to no longer obey or reverence him as bishop, and formally 
releasing them from all subjection to him. Otho doubtless consid- 
ered it imprudent to show himself at the synod of 1075 ; conse- 
quently in that of 1076 he was excommunicated and deprived of his 
episcopal functions. During the autumn of the same year, however, 
the legate Altmann of Passau restored him to communion at Ulm, 
but without granting him the privilege of officiating. Otho disre- 
garded this restriction, and not only persisted in exercising his func- 
tions, but openly favored and protected the married clergy. For 
this Gregory absolved his flock from all obedience to him, whereupon 
Otho abandoned the Catholic party and formally joined the impe- 
rialists, who were then engaged in the effort to depose Gregory. 
From some motives of policy, the pope granted the hardened sinner 
three years for repentance, at the expiration of which, in 1080, he 
sent Altmann to Constance to superintend the election of another 
bishop. The new incumbent, however, proved incapable through 
bodily infirmity ; and, in 1084, Otto of Ostia was sent to Constance, 
and under his auspices Gebhardt was elected bishop, and duly con- 
secrated in 1085. 1 Evidently Gregory was not a man to abandon 



1 Gregor. VII. Epist. extrav. 4, 12, 13. — Bernald. pro Gebhardo Episc. 
Apologet. c. 4, 5, 6, 7. 



230 



HILDEBRAND. 



his purpose, and those who opposed him could not count upon 
perpetual immunity. 

St. Altmann of Passau was renowned for his piety and the strict- 
ness of his religious observance. When the canon of 1074 reached 
him, he assembled his clergy, read it to them, and adjured them to 
pay to it the respect which was requisite. His eloquence was wasted ; 
the clerks openly refused obedience, and defended themselves by im- 
memorial custom, and by the fact that none of their predecessors had 
been called upon to endure so severe and unnatural a regulation. 
Finding the occasion unpropitious, the pious Altmann dissembled ; 
he assured his clergy that he was perfectly willing to indulge them 
if the papal mandate would permit it, and with this he dismissed 
them. He allowed the matter to lie in abeyance until the high feast 
of St. Stephen, the patron saint of the church, which was always 
attended by the magnates of the diocese. Then, without giving 
warning of his intentions, he suddenly mounted the pulpit, read to 
the assembled clergy and laity the letters of the pope, and threatened 
exemplary punishment for disobedience. Though thus taken at 
advantage and by surprise, the clerks were not disposed to submit. 
A terrible tumult at once arose, and the crafty saint would have been 
torn to pieces had it not been for the strenuous interference of the 
nobles, aided, as his biographer assures us, by the assistance of God. 
The clergy continued their resistance, and when, not long after, the 
empire and papacy became involved in internecine strife, they sought 
the protection of Henry IV., who marched upon Passau, and drove 
out St. Altmann and his faction. How unbending was this oppo- 
sition, and how successfully it was maintained, is manifest from the 
fact that when St. Altmann at length returned to his diocese as papal 
legate, about the year 1081, even Gregory felt it necessary to use 
policy rather than force, and instructed him to yield to the pressure 
of the evil times, and to reserve the strict enforcement of the reform 
for a more fortunate period. 1 The political question had thus, for 
the moment, overshadowed the religious one. 

The archiepiscopate of Mainz was, both temporally and spiritually, 
one of the most powerful of the ecclesiastical principalities of Ger- 
many. To the Archbishop Siegfrid, Gregory sent the canon of 
1074 with instructions similar to those contained in his epistle to 



1 Vit. S. Altmanni. — Hinc capitu- 
lum illud de incontinentia sacer- 
dotum a tarn invicto propugnatore 



castitatis dissimulation non appro- 
batum remansit. 



THREE BISHOPS — SIEGFRID OF MAINZ. 231 

Otho of Constance. In reply, Siegfrid promised implicit obedience ; 
but, recognizing the almost insuperable difficulties of the task assigned 
him, he temporized, and gave his clergy six months in which to make 
up their minds, exhorting them to render willing obedience and relieve 
him from the necessity of employing coercion. At the expiration of 
the period, in October, 1074, he assembled a synod at Erfurt, where 
he boldly insisted that they should give up their wives or abandon 
their functions and their benefices. Their arguments and entreaties 
were in vain. Finding him immovable, they retired for consultation, 
when some proposed to separate and return home at once, without 
further parley, and thus elude giving sanction to the new regulations ; 
while bolder spirits urged that it would be better to put the arch- 
bishop to instant death, before he could promulgate so execrable a 
decree, thus leaving for posterity a shining example, which would 
prevent any of his successors from attempting so abominable an 
enterprise. 

Siegfrid's friends advised him of the turn which affairs were likely 
to take. He therefore sent to his clergy a request that they would 
reassemble in synod, promising that he would take the first oppor- 
tunity to apply to Rome for a relaxation of the canon. They agreed 
to this, and, on meeting them the next day, Siegfrid astutely started 
the question of his claims on the Thuringian tithes, which had 
shortly before been settled by the Saxon war. Indignant at this, 
the Thuringian clergy raised a tumult, flew to arms, and the synod 
broke up in the utmost confusion. In December, Gregory wrote to 
the shuffling archbishop an angry letter, reproaching him with his 
lukewarmness in the cause, and ordering him to present himself at 
the synod announced for the coming Lent. Siegfrid obediently went 
to Rome, but was with difficulty admitted to communion. What 
promises he made to obtain it were not kept, for again in September, 
1075, Gregory addressed him with commands to enforce the canons. 
Stimulated by this, Siegfrid convoked a synod at Mainz in October, 
where the Bishop of Coire appeared with a papal mandate threat- 
ening him with degradation and expulsion if he failed in compelling 
the priests to abandon either their wives or their ministry. Thus 
goaded, Siegfrid did his best, but the whole body of the clergy raised 
such a clamor and made demonstrations so active and so formidable 
that the archbishop saw little prospect of escaping with life. The 
danger from his mutinous flock was more instant and pressing than 
that from the angry pope ; his resolution gave way, and he dissolved 



232 



H1LDEBKAND. 



the synod, declaring that he washed his hands of the affair, and that 
Gregory might deal as he saw fit with a matter which was beyond 
his power to control. Thus placed between the upper and the nether 
millstone, it is not to be wondered at if Siegfrid took refuge in the 
party of the imperialists, nor that his name stands at the head of the 
list of bishops who in 1076 passed judgment on Gregory, and pro- 
nounced that he had forfeited all claim to the papacy ; neither is it 
surprising that Gregory lost no time in excommunicating him at 
the Roman synod of the same year. 1 

These examples are sufficient to illustrate the difficulties with 
which Gregory had to contend, and the manner in which he en- 
deavored to overcome them. The incidents are by no means excep- 
tional, and his marvellous vigor and energy in supervising the 
movement everywhere, encouraging the zealous co-worker and pun- 
ishing the lukewarm and indifferent, are abundantly attested by his 
correspondence. He apparently had an eye on every corner of 
Europe, and lost no opportunity of enforcing his views with threats 
or promises, as the case might seem to demand. 2 

It did not take long, however, to convince him that he could count 
upon no efficient assistance from the hierarchy, and that if the church 
was to be purified, it must be purified from without, and not from 
within. To the unutterable horror of those strict churchmen who 
regarded the immunity from all temporal supervision or jurisdiction 
as one of the most precious of ecclesiastical privileges, he took, as 
early as 1074, the decided and unprecedented step of authorizing the 
laity to withdraw their obedience from all prelates and priests who 
disregarded the canons of the Holy See on the subjects of simony 



1 Gregor. VII. Epist. extrav. 12.— 
Lambert. Hersfeld. aim. 1074-5-6. — 
Udalr. Babenb. Cod. Lib. n. c. 132. 
— Gregor. Kegist. Lib. n. Epist. 29. — 
Goldast. Constit. Imp. I. 237. 

An encyclical letter of Siegfrid, in 
1075, states that Gregory had sent to 
his diocese commissioners to reform the 
immorality of the clergy, and that they 
had labored earnestly, but fruitlessly, 
to accomplish the task by a liberal use 
of suspension and excommunication. 
He had thereupon reported to the pope 
the scandal and infamy of his church, 
when Gregory, considering the multi- 
tude of the transgressors, counselled 



moderation. Siegfrid therefore orders 
all incorrigible offenders to be sus- 
pended and sent to him for judgment. 
(Hartzheim Concil. German. III. 
175.) — Hartzheim also (III. 749) gives, 
under date of 1077, another letter from 
Siegfrid to Gregory, in which he prom- 
ises to do his best in reforming the 
clergy, but advises moderation towards 
those whose weakness merits compas- 
sion. 

2 See, for instance, Lib. I. Epist. 30 ; 
Lib. ii. Epistt. 25, 55, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 
68 ; Lib. in. Epist. 4 ; Lib. iv. Epistt. 
10, 11, 20; Lib. vn. Epist. 1 ; Epistt. 
extrav. 4, 12, 13, etc. 



APPEAL TO THE LAITY. 



233 



and incontinence. 1 This principle, once adopted, was followed up 
with his customary unalterable resolution. In October, 1074, he 
wrote to a certain Count Albert, exhorting him not to mind what 
the simoniacal and concubinary priests might say, but, in spite of 
them, to persist in enforcing the orders which emanated from Rome. 
Still more menacing was an epistle addressed in January, 1075, to 
Rodolf, Duke of Swabia, and Bertolf, Duke of Carinthia, command- 
ing them — " whatever the bishops may say or may not say con- 
cerning this, do you in no manner receive the ministrations of those 
who owe promotion or ordination to simony, or whom you know to 
be guilty of concubinage . . . and, as far as you can, do you pre- 
vent, by force if necessary, all such persons from officiating. And 
if any shall presume to prate and say that it is not your business, 
tell them to come to us and dispute about the obedience which we 
thus enjoin upon you" — and adding a bitter complaint of the arch- 
bishops and bishops who, with rare exceptions, had taken no steps 
to put an end to these execrable customs, or to punish the guilty. 2 

These extraordinary measures called forth indignant denunciations 
on the part of ecclesiastics, for these letters were circulars sent to all 
the princes on whom he could depend, and he insured their publicity 
by causing similar orders to be published in the churches themselves. 
Thus Theodoric, Bishop of Verdun, who had inclined to the side of 
Gregory and had secretly left the Assembly of Utrecht in 1076 to 
avoid countenancing by his presence the excommunication then pro- 
nounced against the pope, in a letter to Gregory bitterly reproaches 
his own folly in promulgating the decretal and in not foreseeing its 
effect as destructive to the peace of the church, to the safety of the 
clerical order, and as creating a disturbance which threatened even the 
Christian faith. 3 So Henry, Bishop of Speyer, indignantly de- 
nounced him as having destroyed the authority of the bishops and 



* * His praecipimus vos nullo modo 
obedire, vel eorum prseceptis consen- 
tire, sicut ipsi apostolicse sedis prse- 
ceptis non obediunt, neque auctoritati 
sanctorum patrum consentiunt. — Gre- 
gor. VII. Epist. extrav. 14. "Omnibus 
clericis et laicis in regno Teutonicorum 
constitutes." 

2 Eegist. Lib. n. Epist. 45. 

Letters conceived in the same spirit 
are extant, addressed to the principal 
laymen of Chiusi in Tuscany, to the 
Count and Countess of Flanders, &c. 



(Lib. ii. Epist. 47 ; Lib. iv. Epistt. 10, 
11.) 

3 Martene et Durand. Thesaur. I. 
218.— Hugon. Elavin. Chron. Lib. II. 
ann. 1079. — Cf. Chron. Augustinens. 
ann. 1075. Theodoric was naturally 
forced in the end to take a decided 
stand against Gregory. See his letter 
in Goldastus, T. I. p. 236, and the ac- 
count of his episcopate in the Gesta 
Trevir. Archiep. (Martene Ampl. 
Collect. IV. 175-8). 



234 HILDEBRAND. 

subjected the church to the madness of the people; 1 and when the 
bishops, at the Diet of Worms, threw off their allegiance to him, one of 
the reasons alleged, in Henry's letter to him, is the surrender which 
he had made of the church to the laity. 2 Yet Gregory was not to 
be diverted from his course, and he was at least successful in rousing 
the Teutonic church from the attitude of passive resistance which 
threatened to render his efforts futile. The princes of Germany, 
who were already intriguing with Gregory for support in their 
perennial revolts against their sovereign, were delighted to seize the 
opportunity of at once obliging the pope, creating disturbance at 
home, and profiting by the church property which they could manage 
to get into their hands by ejecting the unfortunate married priests. 
They accordingly proceeded to exercise, without delay and to the 
fullest extent, the unlimited power so suddenly granted them over a 
class which had hitherto successfully defied their jurisdiction ; nor 
was it difficult to excite the people to join in the persecution of those 
who had always held themselves as superior beings, and who were 
now pronounced by the highest authority in the church to be sinners 
of the worst description. The ignorant populace were naturally 
captivated by the idea of the vicarious mortification with which their 
own errors were to be redeemed by the abstinence imposed upon 
their pastors, and they were not unreasonably led to believe that 
they were themselves deeply wronged by the want of purity in their 
ecclesiastics. Add to this the attraction which persecution always 
possesses for the persecutor, and the license of plunder so dear to a 
turbulent and barbarous age, and it is not difficult to comprehend the 
motive power of the storm which burst over the heads of the secular 
clergy, and which must have satisfied by its severity the stern soul 
of Gregory himself. 

A contemporary writer, whose name has been lost, but who is 
supposed by Dom Martene to have been a priest of Treves, gives us 
a very lively picture of the horrors which ensued, and as he shows 
himself friendly in principle to the reform attempted, his account 
may be received as trustworthy. He describes what amounted 



1 Udalr. Babenb. Cod. Lib. 11. cap. | ference with married priests, and it is 
162. la little singular to observe that bis 

„ A ,. , c ia-/> ! decretal on tbe subject is extracted by 

2 Annahsta Saxo, ann. 10/6. -r , nVl ,_ /tw™ + ; t> tt na S 



"We bave already seen (p. 142) that 
Nicholas I., in the ninth century, had 
expressly forbidden any popular inter- 



Ivo of Chartres (Decreti P. n. cap. 
82) and presented as valid law, in less 
than a generation after the death of 
Gregory VII. 



PERSECUTION OF THE CLERGY. 



235 



almost to a dissolution of society, slave betraying master and master 
slave; friend informing against friend; snares and pitfalls spread 
before the feet of all ; faith and truth unknown. The peccant priests 
suffered terribly. Some, reduced to utter poverty, and unable to 
bear the scorn and contempt of those from whom they had been wont 
to receive honor and respect, wandered off as homeless exiles ; others, 
mutilated by the indecent zeal of ardent puritans, were carried 
around to exhibit their shame and misery ; others, tortured in 
lingering death, bore to the tribunal on high the testimony of blood- 
guiltiness against their persecutors ; while others, again, in spite of 
danger, secretly continued the connections which exposed them to all 
these cruelties. In the midst of these troubles, as might be expected, 
the offices of religion were wholly neglected ; the new-born babe 
received no holy baptism ; the dying penitent expired without the 
saving viaticum ; the sinner could cleanse his soul by no confession 
and absolution ; and the devotee could no longer be strengthened by 
the daily sacrifice of the mass. 1 Another writer, of nearly the same 
date, relates with holy horror how the laity shook off all the obedience 
which they owed to their pastors, and, despising the sacraments pre- 
pared by them, trod the Eucharist under foot and cast out the sacred 
wine, administered baptism with unlicensed hands, and substituted 
for the holy chrism the filthy wax collected from their own ears. 2 

When such was the fate of the pastors, it is easy to imagine the 
misery inflicted on their unfortunate wives. A zealous admirer of 
Gregory relates with pious gratulation, as indubitable eviderice of 
divine vengeance, how, maddened by their wrongs, some of them 
openly committed suicide, while others were found dead in the beds 
which they had sought in perfect health ; and this being proof of 
their possession by the devil, they were denied Christian sepulture. 
The case of Count Manigold of Veringen affords a not uninstructive 
instance of the frightful passions aroused by the relentless cruelty 
which thus branded them as infamous, tore them from their families, 
and cast them adrift upon a mocking world. The count had put in 
force the orders of Gregory with strict severity throughout his estates 
in the Swabian Alps. One miserable creature thus driven from her 



1 The writer indignantly adds — " Si 
autem quseris talis fructus a qua radice 
pullulaverit, lex ad laicos promulgata, 
qua imperitis persuasum est conjuga- 
torum sacerdotum missas et qusecum- 



que per eos implentur mysteria fugi- 
enda esse, in reipublicse nostras ornatum 
illud adjecit." — Martene et Durand. 
Thesaur. I. 230-1. 

1074. 



236 HILDEBRAND. 

husband swore that the count should undergo the same fate, and, in 
the blindness of her rage, she poisoned the Countess of Veringen, 
whose widowed husband, overwhelmed with grief, sought no second 
mate. 1 

Nor was the customary machinery of miracles wanting to stimu- 
late the zeal of the faithful in this pious work, and to convince the 
doubters whose worldly wisdom or humanity might shrink from the 
task assigned them. Unchaste priests at Mass would find sudden 
blasts of wind overturn the cup, and scatter the sacred wine upon 
the ground, or the holy wafer would be miraculously snatched out of 
their polluted hands. The saintly virgin Herluca saw in a vision 
the Saviour, with his wounds profusely bleeding, and was told that 
if she desired to escape a repetition of the horrifying spectacle, she 
must no longer be present at the ministrations of Father Richard, 
the officiating priest of her convent — a revelation which she employed 
effectually upon him and his parishioners. The same holy maiden 
being observed staring intently out of the window, declared, upon 
being questioned, that she had seen the soul of the priest of Rota 
carried off by demons to eternal punishment ; and, on sending to his 
habitation, it was found that he had expired at the very moment. 2 
Puerile as these tales may seem to us, they were stern realities to 
those against whose weaknesses they were directed, and whose suf- 
ferings were thus enhanced by every art which bigotry could bring 
to bear upon the credulous passions of a barbarous populace. 

It cannot be a matter of surprise if men, who were thus threatened 
with almost every worldly evil, should seek to defend themselves by 
means as violent as those employed by their persecutors. Their 
cruel intensity of fear is aptly illustrated by what occurred at Cam- 
brai in 1077, where a man was actually burned at the stake as a 
heretic for declaring his adhesion to the Hildebrandine doctrine that 
the masses of simoniacal and concubinary priests were not to be 
listened to by the faithful. 3 So, in the same year, when the pseudo- 
emperor Rodolf of Swabia was elected by the papalists at the Diet 
of Forcheim as a competitor to Henry IV., he manifested his zeal to 
suppress the heresies of avarice and lust by refusing the ministration 
of a simoniacal deacon in the coronation solemnities at Mainz. The 
clergy of that city, who had so successfully resisted, for two years, 

1 Pauli Bernried. Vit. Gregor. VII. No. 81, 107. 

2 Ibid. No. 105, 106, 107. 

3 Gregor. VII. Eegist. Lib. iv. Epist. 20. 



POLITICAL ASPECT OF THE REFORM. 



237 



the efforts of their archbishop Siegfrid to reduce them to subjection 
to the canons, were dismayed at the prospect of coming under the 
control of so pious a prince, who would indubitably degrade them or 
compel them to give up their wives and simoniacally acquired churches. 
They therefore stirred up a tumult among the citizens, who were 
ready to espouse their cause ; and when Rodolf left his palace for 
vespers, he was attacked by the people. The conflict was renewed 
on his return, causing heavy slaughter on both sides, and though the 
townsmen were driven back, Rodolf was forced to leave the city. 1 



This incident affords us a glimpse into the political aspects of the 
reform. In the tremendous struggle between the empire and papacy, 
Gregory allied himself with all the disaffected princes of Germany, 
and they were careful to justify their rebellions under the specious 
pretext of zeal for the apostolic church. They of course, therefore, 
entered heartily into his measures for the restoration of ecclesiastical 
discipline, and professed the sternest indignation towards those whom 
he placed under the ban. Thus, after Henry, in 1076, had caused 
his bishops to declare the degradation of Gregory, when the revolted 
princes held their assembly at Tribur, and in turn decreed the depo- 
sition of Henry, they used the utmost caution to exclude all who had 
communicated with Henry since his excommunication, together with 
those who had obtained preferment by simony, or who had joined in 
communion with married priests. 2 The connection, indeed, became 
so marked that the papalists throughout Germany were stigmatized 
by the name of Patarini — a term which had acquired so sinister a 
significance in the troubles of Milan. 3 In this state of affairs it was 
natural that common enmities and common dangers should unite the 
persecuted clergy and the hunted sovereign. Yet it is a curious 
illustration of the influence which the denunciations of sacerdotal 
marriage had exercised over the public mind, that although Henry 
tacitly protected the simoniacal and married ecclesiastics, and although 
they rallied around him and afforded him unquestionable and invalu- 
able aid, still he never ventured openly to defend them. Writers 



1 Pauli Bernried. Vit. G-regor. VII. 
No. 87. — Ekkehard of Uraugen and 
the Annalista Saxo, however, in their 
accounts of these disturbances, attrib- 
ute them to political rather than to 
ecclesiastical causes. The latter, no 
doubt, would hardly have been effi- 



cient without the former. The efforts 
of Henry to reduce the savage feudal 
nobles to order made him, throughout 
his reign, a favorite with the cities. 

2 Lambert. Hersfeld. ann. 1076. 

3 Hugon. Flaviniac. Lib. n. 



238 



HILDEBRAND. 



both then and since have attributed the measure of success with 
which he sustained the fluctuating contest, and the consequent suf- 
ferings of the unbending pope, to the efforts of the recalcitrant clergy 
who resisted the yoke imposed on them by Rome. 1 Yet Henry had 
formally and absolutely pledged his assistance when Gregory com- 
menced his efforts, and had repeated the promise in 1075 ; 2 and from 
this position he never definitely withdrew. Even when the schis- 
matic bishops of his party, at the synod of Brixen, in 1080, pro- 
nounced sentence of deposition on Gregory, and filled the assumed 
vacancy with an anti-pope, the man whom they elected never ven- 
tured to dispute the principle of Gregory's reforms, although the 
Lombard prelates, at that very time, were warmly defending their 
married and simoniacal clergy. 3 Indeed, Guiberto of Ravenna, or 
Clement III., took occasion to express his detestation of concubinage 
in language nearly as strong as that of his rival, although he threat- 
ened with excommunication the presumptuous laymen who should 
refuse to receive the sacraments of priests that had not been regu- 
larly tried and condemned at his own papal tribunal. 4 In thus 



1 Ob hanc igitur causani, quia sci- 
licet sanctain Dei ecclesiam castam esse 
volebat, liberam atque catholicam, quia 
de sanctuario Dei simoniacam et neo- 
pbytorum hseresim et fedam libidinosas 
contagionis pollutionem volebat expel- 
lere, membra diaboli cceperunt in eum 
insurgere, et usque ad sanguinem prse- 
sumpserunt in eum manus injicere. — 
Hugon. Elaviniac. Lib. n. 

Eo vesanise imperatorem induxerat 
caeca sacerdotum (qui tunc frequentes 
apud eum erant) libido. Timebant 
enim si cum pontifice in gratiam redi- 
ret, actum esse de concubinis suis, 
quas illi pluris quam vel propriam 
salutem vel publicam pendebant ho- 
nestatem. — Hieron. Emser Yit. S. 
Bennon. c. in. § 40. 

Gregory's celebrated exclamation 
on his death-bed does not, however, 
specially recognize this — " Dilexi jus- 
titiam et odivi iniquitatem, propterea 
morior in exilio." 

2 Gregor. VII. Kegist. Lib. i. Epist. 
30; Lib. in. Epist. 3. 

3 According to Conrad of Ursperg 
(Chron. ann. 1080) among the reasons 
adduced for the deposition of Gregory 
by the synod of Brixen, was " Qui 
inter Concordes seminavit discordiam, 
inter pacificos lites, inter fratres scan- 



dala, inter conjuges divortia, et quic- 
quid quiete inter pie viventes stare 
videbatur, concussit" — in which the 
words italicized may possibly allude 
to the separation of the married 
clergy. Conrad, however, was a com- 
piler of the thirteenth century, and 
his statements are not to be received 
without caution. If this motive had 
its weight with the prelates of the 
synod, they did not care to publish it 
to the world, for there is no allusion 
to it in the letter of renunciation ad- 
dressed by them to Gregory (Goldast. 
Const. Imp. I. 238) — forming a strik- 
ing contrast to the proceedings of the 
synod of Pavia in 1076, already al- 
luded to. 

i Wibert Antipap. Epist. vi. 
Bishop Benzo, the most bitter of 
imperialists, did not desire to be con- 
founded with the Mcolitan heretics — 
" Onmis enim caste vivens tenipluin Dei 
dicitur ; 
Si quis tantum sacramentum violare ni- 

titur, 
Unus de porcorura grege protinus efficitur. 
Facti coelibes ardentem fugiamus Sodo- 

mam : 
Hierosolymam petamus, Christianis com- 
modam." 

Comment, de Keb. Hen. IV. Lib. Y. 
c. 6. 



HIS FINAL TRIUMPH. 



239 



endeavoring to place himself as a shield between the suffering priest- 
hood and the persecuting populace, he was virtually striving to 
annul the reforms of Gregory, since in no other way could they be 
carried into effect ; but he was forced to coincide with Gregory as to 
the principle which dictated those reforms. Notwithstanding all 
these precautions, however, the papalists were not disposed to allow 
their opponents to escape the responsibility of the alliance which 
brought them so much strength by dividing the church, and no 
opportunity was lost of stigmatizing them for the license which they 
protected. When Guiberto and his cardinals were driven out of 
Rome in 1084 by Robert Guiscard and his Normans, the flying 
prelates were ridiculed, not for their cowardice, but for their shaven 
chins, and the wives and concubines whom they publicly carried 
about with them. 1 

At length Henry and his partisans appear to have felt it necessary 
to make some public declaration to relieve themselves from the odium 
of supporting and favoring a practice which was popularly regarded 
as a heresy and a scandal. When the papalists, under their King 
Hermann, at the Easter of 1085 (April 20th), convened a general 
assembly of their faction at Quedlinburg and again forbade all com- 
merce with women to those in orders, 2 the imperialists lost no time 
in putting themselves on the same record with their rivals. Three 
weeks later Henry gathered around him, at Mainz, all the princes 
and prelates who professed allegiance to him, for the purpose of 
securing the succession to his eldest son, Conrad, as King of Ger- 
many, and there, in that solemn diet, marriage was formally pro- 
hibited to the priesthood. 3 Gregory was then lying on his dying 
bed in the far off castle of Salerno, and ere the news could reach 



1 Honorius III. in Vit. Gregor. VII. 
No. 15. 

2 Bernald. Constant, ad Herman. 
Contract. Append, ann. 1085. 

3 Henricus multitudinem sequens, 
accessit eis qui sacerdotum conjugium 
sublatum volebant. Quare resistentes 
ei opinioni condemnati sunt. — H. Mu- 
tii German. Chron. Lib. xv. 

I do not remember to have met with 
any contemporary authority for this 
assertion, nor is there any provision 
of this nature in the decrees of the 
Diet as given by Goldastus (I. 245) ; 
but the chroniclers of the period were 
generally papalists, and would be apt 



to omit recording anything which they 
would deem so creditable to their ad- 
versaries. Yet that the imperialists 
were no longer held responsible for 
clerical irregularities is evident from, 
a letter written in 1090 by Stephen, 
the papalist Bishop of Halberstadt, to 
Waltram of Magdeburg, who was a 
follower of Henry. In all his violent 
invectives against the imperialists, 
and in his long catalogue of their 
sins, he makes no allusion to priestly 
incontinence, showing that they must 
have disavowed these irregularities so 
formally as to leave no ground for im- 
putations of complicity (Dodechini 
Append, ad Mar. Scot. ann. 1090). 



240 HILDEBRAND. 

him he was past the vanities of earthly triumph. Could he have 
known, however, that the cause for which he had risked the integrity 
and independence of the church had thus received the support of its 
bitterest enemies, and that his unwavering purpose had thus achieved 
the moral victory of forcing his adversaries to range themselves under 
his banner, his spirit would have rejoiced, and his confidence in the 
ultimate success of the great theocratic system, for the maintenance 
of which he was thus expiring in exile, would have softened the 
sorrows of a life which closed in the darkness and doubt of defeat. 



XV. 
CENTRAL EUROPE, 



Hildebrand had passed away, leaving to his successors the legacy 
of inextinguishable hate and unattained ambition. Nor was the 
reform for which he had labored as yet by any means secured in 
practice, even though his opponents had been reduced to silence or 
had been forced to render a formal adhesion to the canons which he 
had proclaimed so boldly. 

The cause of asceticism, it is true, had gained many adherents 
among the laity. Throughout Germany, husbands and wives sepa- 
rated from each other in vast numbers, and devoted themselves to 
the service of the church, without taking vows or assuming ecclesi- 
astical garments; while those who were unmarried renounced the 
pleasures of the world, and, placing themselves under the direction 
of spiritual guides, abandoned themselves entirely to religious duties. 
To such an extent did this prevail, that the pope was applied to for 
his sanction, which he eagerly granted, and the movement doubtless 
added strength to the party of reform. 1 Yet but little had thus far 
been really gained in purifying the church itself, notwithstanding the 
fearful ordeal through which its ministers had passed. 

As for Germany, the indomitable energy of Henry IV., unre- 
pressed by defeat and unchilled by misfortune, had at length achieved 
a virtual triumph over his banded enemies. But four bishops of the 
Empire — those of Wurzburg, Passau, Worms, and Constance — owned 
allegiance to Urban II. All the other dioceses were filled by schis- 
matics, who rendered obedience to the anti-pope Clement. In 1089 
the Catholic or papalist princes offered to lay down their arms and 
do homage to Henry if he would acknowledge Urban and make his 
peace with the true church. The emperor, however, had a pope who 



1 Bernald. Constant, ann. 1091. 
16 



242 



CENTRAL EUROPE. 



suited him, and he entertained too lively a recollection of the trials 
from which he was escaping to open the door to a renewal of the 
papal pretensions, which he had at length successfully defied, nor 
would he consent to stigmatize his faithful prelates as schismatics. 1 
He therefore pursued his own course, and Guiberto of Ravenna 
enjoyed the honors of the popedom, checkered by alternate vicissi- 
tudes of good and evil fortune, until removed by death in the year 
110 0, 2 his sanctity attested by the numerous miracles wrought at his 
tomb, which only needed the final success of the imperialist cause to 
enrich the calendar with a St. Clement in place of a St. Gregory 
and a St. Urban. 3 

Under such auspices, no very zealous maintenance of ecclesiastical 
discipline was to be expected. If Clement's sensibilities were 
humored by a nominal reprobation of sacerdotal marriage, he could 
scarcely ask for more or insist that Henry should rekindle the embers 
of disaffection by enforcing the odious rules which had proved so 
powerful a cause of trouble to their authors and his enemies. Ac- 
cordingly, it cannot surprise us to observe that Urban II., in fol- 
lowing out the views of his predecessors, felt it necessary to adopt 
measures even more violent than those which in Gregory's hands had 
caused so much excitement and confusion, but whose inefficiency was 
confessed by the very effort to supplement them. In 1089, the year 
after his consecration, Urban published at the council of Amalfi a 
decree by which, as usual, married ecclesiastics were sentenced to 
deposition, and bishops who permitted such irregularities were sus- 
pended ; but where Gregory had been content with ejecting husbands 
and wives, and with empowering secular rulers to enforce the edict 
on recalcitrants, Urban, with a refinement of cruelty, reduced the 
unfortunate women to slavery, and offered their servitude as a bribe 
to the nobles who should aid in thus purifying the church. 4 If this 



1 Bernald. Constant, ann. 1089. 

2 A monkish chronicler professes to 
record of his own knowledge Guiberto 's 
death-bed remorse for the schism which 
he had been instrumental in causing. 
"Malens, ut ab ore ipsius didicimus, 
apostolici nomen nunquam suscepisse." 
— Chron. Reg. S. Pantaleon. ann. 1100. 

» Udalr. Babenb. Cod. Lib. II. c. 173. 

4 Eos qui in subdiaconatu uxoribus 
vacare voluerint, ab omni sacro ordine 
removemus, officio atque beneficio ec- 
clesise carere decernimus. Quod si ab 
episcopo commoniti non se correx- 



erint, principibus licentiam indul- 
gemus ut eorum feminas mancipent 
servituti. Si vero episcopi consense- 
rint eorum pravitatibus, ipsi officii 
interdictione mulctentur. — Synod. 
Melfit. ann. 1089, can. 12. 

The second canon of the same coun- 
cil — " Sacrorum canonum instituta re- 
no vantes, praecipimus ut a tempore 
subdiaconatus nulli liceat carnale com- 
mercium exercere. Quod si deprehen- 
sus fuerit, ordinis sui periculum sus- 
tinebit ' ' — shows how much more venial 
was the offence of promiscuous licen- 
tiousness than the heresy of marrriage. 



EFFORTS OF URBAN II. 



243 



infamous canon did not work misery so wide-spread as the compara- 
tively milder decretals of Gregory, it was because the power of Urban 
was circumscribed by the schism, while he was apparently himself 
ashamed or afraid to promulgate it in regions where obedience was 
doubtful. When Pibo, Bishop of Toul, in the same year, 1089, sent 
an envoy to ask his decision on various points of discipline, including 
sacerdotal marriage (the necessity of such inquiry showing the futility 
of previous efforts), Urban transmitted the canons of Amalfi in response, 
but omitted this provision, which well might startle the honest 
German mind. 1 Perhaps, on reflection, Urban may himself have 
wished to disavow the atrocity, for in a subsequent council, when 
again attacking the ineradicable sin, he contented himself with simply 
forbidding all such marriages, and ordering all persons who were 
bound by orders or vows to be separated from their wives or concu- 
bines, and to be subjected to due penance. 2 

Yet even in those regions of Germany which persevered in resisting 
Henry and in recognizing Urban as pope, the persecution of twenty 
years was still unsuccessful, and the people had apparently relapsed 
into condoning the wickedness of their pastors. In an assembly held 
at Constance in 1094, it was deemed necessary to impose a fine on 
all who should be present at the services performed by priests who 
had transgressed the canons. 3 When this was the case in the 
Catholic provinces, it is easy to imagine that in the imperialist 
territories the thunders of Gregory and Urban had long since been 
forgotten, and that marrying and giving in marriage were practised 
with as little scruple as ever. A fair illustration, indeed, of the 
amount of respect paid to the rules of discipline is afforded by a dis- 
cussion on the choice of a successor to Cosmo Bishop of Prague, who 
died in 1098. Duke Brecislas, in filling the vacancy with his 
chaplain Hermann, endeavored to rebut the arguments of those who 
objected to the foreign birth of the appointee by urging that fact as 
a recommendation, since, as a stranger, he would not be pressed 
upon by a crowd of kindred nor be burdened with the care of 
children, thus showing that the native priesthood, as a general rule, 
were heads of families. 4 For this, moreover, they could not plead 



1 Urbani II. Epist. 24. 

2 G-ratian. Dist. xxvn. c. 8. 

8 Decret. Comit. Constant, c. 
(Goldast. I. 246). 



4 Et quia hospes est, plus ecclesias 
prodest : non eum parentela exhauriet, 
non liber orum cur a aggravabit, non 
cognatorum turba despoliet — Cosmse 
Pragens. Chron. Lib. in. ann. 1098. — 
It should, however, be borne in mind 



244 



CENTRAL EUROPE. 



ignorance, for a Bohemian penitential of the period expressly pro- 
hibits priests from having companions whose society could give rise 
to suspicion of any kind. 1 

At length the duel which, for more than thirty years, Henry had 
so gallantly fought with the successors of St. Peter drew to a close. 
Ten years of supremacy he had enjoyed in Germany, and he looked 
forward to the peaceful decline of his unquiet life, when the treacher- 
ous calm was suddenly disturbed. Papal intrigues in 1093 had 
caused the parricidal revolt of his eldest born, the weak and vacil- 
lating Conrad, whose early death had then extinguished the memory 
of his crime. That unnatural rebellion had gained for Rome the 
North of Italy ; and as the emperor's second son, Henry, grew to 
manhood, he, too, was marked as a fit instrument to pierce his 
father's heart, and to extend the domination of the church by the 
foulest wrongs that man can perpetrate. The startling revolution 
which in 1105 precipitated Henry from a throne to a prison, from 
an absolute monarch to a captive embracing the knees of his son 
and pleading for his wretched life, established forever the supremacy 
of the papacy over Germany. The consequent enforcement of the 
law of celibacy became only a question of time. 

As the excuse for the rebellion was the necessity of restoring the 
empire to the communion of Rome, one of the first measures of the 
conspirators was the convocation of a council to be held at Nord- 
hausen, May 29, 1105, and one of the objects specified for its action 
was the expulsion of all married priests. 2 The council was duly held, 
and duly performed its work of condemning the heresy which per- 
mitted benefices to be occupied and sacred functions exercised by 
those who were involved in the ties of matrimony. 3 Pope Paschal 
II. was not remiss in his share of the ceremony, by which he was 
to receive the fruits of his treacherous intrigues. The following 
year a great council was held at Guastalla, where, after interminable 



that Bohemia had been Christianized 
in 871 by Cyrillus and Methodius, 
missionaries from Constantinople, and 
the national Slavonic worship, founded 
on the Greek faith, after many strug- 
gles, was not abolished until 1094 (see 
Krasinski's Eeformation in Poland, 
London, 1838, I. 13). The attachment 
of the race to their ancestral rites ex- 



plains the proneness of the Bohemians 
and Poles to fall away into heresy. 

' Hofler, Concilia Pragensia p. xiii. 
(Prag, 1862.) 

2 Annalista Saxo, ann. 1105. 

3 Nycholaitarum quoque fornicaria 
commixtio ibidem est ab omnibus 
abdicata. — Chron. Keg. S. Pantaleon. 
ann. 1105. Cf. Annal. Saxo, ann. 1105. 



BOHEMIA 



245 



discussions as to the propriety of receiving without re-ordination those 
who had compromised themselves or who had been ordained by schis- 
matics, he admitted into the fold all the repentant ecclesiastics of the 
party of Henry IV. 1 The text of the canon granting this boon to 
the imperialist clergy bears striking testimony to the completeness 
of the separation which had existed between the Teutonic and the 
Roman churches in stating that throughout the empire scarce any 
Catholic ecclesiastics were to be found. 2 It scarcely needed the 
declaration which Paschal made in 1107 at the synod of Troyes, 
condemning married priests to degradation and deprivation, 3 to show 
that the doctrines of Damiani and Hildebrand were thenceforth to 
be the law of the empire. 

The question thus was definitely settled in prohibiting the priests 
of Germany from marrying or from retaining the wives whom they 
had taken previous to ordination. It was settled, indeed, in the rolls 
of parchment which recorded the decrees of councils and the trading 
bargains of pope and kaiser, yet the perennial struggle continued, 
and the parchment roll for yet awhile was powerless before the pas- 
sions of man, who did not cease to be man because his crown was 
shaven and his shoulders wore cope and stole. 

Cosmo, who was Dean of Prague, who had been bred to the church, 
and had been promoted to the priesthood in 1099, chronicles, in 1118, 
the death of Boseteha, his wife, in terms which show that no separa- 
tion had ever occurred between them ; and five years later he alludes 
to his son Henry in a manner to indicate that there was no irregu- 
larity in such relationship, nor aught that would cause him to forfeit 
the respect of his contemporaries in acknowledging it. 4 Even more 
to the point is the case of a pious priest, his friend, who, on the death 
of his wife (" presbytera"), made a vow that he would have no further 
intercourse with women. Cosmo relates that the unaccustomed dep- 
rivation proved harder than he had expected, and that for some years 
he was tortured with burning temptation. Finding at length that 
his resolution was giving way, he resolved to imitate St. Benedict in 



1 Compare Bernaldi Constant, de 
Reordinatione vitanda etc. 

2 Quod cum dolore dicimus, vix pauci 
sacerdotes aut clerici Catholici in tanta 
terrarum latitudine reperiantur. — 
Annal. Saxo, ann. HOG. 



3 Concil. Trecens. ann. 1107 c. 2 
(Pertz, Legum T. II. P. ii. p. 181). 

4 Cosmse Pragensis Chron. Lib. in. 
ann. 1118, 1123. 

Rerum cunctarum comes indimota mearum 
Bis Februi quinis obiit Boseteha kalendis. 



246 CENTEAL EUROPE. 

conquering the flesh ; and having no suitable solitude for the execu- 
tion of his purpose, he took a handful of nettles to his chamber, 
where, casting off his garments, he thrashed himself so unmercifully 
that for three days he lay moribund. Then he hung the nettles in a 
conspicuous position on his wall, that he might always have before 
his eyes so significant a memento and warning. 1 Cosmo's admiration 
for this, as a rare and almost incredible exhibition of priestly virtue 
and fortitude, shows how few were capable of even remaining wid- 
owers, while the whole story proves that not only the clergy were 
free to marry, but also that it was only the voluntary vow that pre- 
vented a second marriage. At the close of the century Pietro, Car- 
dinal of Santa Maria in Via Lata, sent as Legate to Bohemia by 
Celestin III., was much scandalized at this state of affairs; and when 
a number of postulants for holy orders were assembled in the church 
of St. Vitus at Prague, before ordaining them he pronounced a dis- 
course on the subject of celibacy and demanded that they should all 
swear to preserve continence. Thereupon all the priests who were 
present rushed forward and urged them not to assume an obligation 
hitherto unknown, and when the Cardinal ordered the Archdeacon 
to repress their somewhat active demonstrations, they proceeded to 
pummel that unhappy official and the tumult was with difficulty 
repressed by the soldiery who were summoned. The legate sentenced 
some of the rioters to be starved to death in prison and the rest to 
be exiled — a wholesome severity which broke the spirit of the 
Bohemian priesthood and led to the introduction of celibacy. 2 

That this state of things was not confined to the wild Bohemian 
Marches, but obtained throughout Germany in general, is sufficiently 
attested by the fact that when Innocent II. was driven out of Rome 
by the anti-pope Anaclet, and was wandering throughout Europe 
begging recognition, he held, in conjunction with the Emperor 
Lothair, in 1131, a council at Liege, where he procured the adoption 
of a canon prohibiting priestly marriage or attendance on the mass 
of married priests. Not only does the necessity of this fresh legis- 
lation show that previous enactments had become obsolete, but the 
manner in which these proceedings are referred to by the chroniclers 
plainly indicates that it took the Teutonic mind somewhat by sur- 



1 Ibid. Lib. in. ann. 1125 (Mencken. Script. Eer. German, in. 1799). 

2 Dubravii Hist. Bohem. Lib. xiv. (Ed. 1687, pp. 880-1.) 



GERMANY. 



247 



prise, and that the efforts of Gregory and Urban had not only 
remained without result, but had become absolutely forgotten. 1 

If these proceedings of Innocent had any effect, it was only to 
make matters worse. The pious Rupert, Abbot of Duits, writing a 
few years later, deplores the immorality of the priesthood, who not 
only entered into forbidden marriages, but, knowing them to be 
illegal, had no scruple in multiplying the tie, considering it to be, 
at their pleasure, devoid of all binding force. 2 And in Liege itself, 
where Innocent had held his council, Bishop Albero, whose episco- 
pate commenced in 1135, permitted his priests to celebrate their 
marriages openly, so that, as we are told, the citizens rather pre- 
ferred to give their daughters in marriage to them than to laymen; 
and the naive remark of the chronicler that the clergy gave up 
keeping concubines in secret and took wives openly would seem to 
show that the cause of morality had not gained during the temporary 
restriction imposed by Innocent. 3 It was not to much purpose that 
Albero was deprived of his see for this laxity, for the same state of 
things continued. No province of Germany was more orthodox than 
Salzburg, yet the archdeacon of the archiepiscopal church there, 
writing in 1175, bewails the complete demoralization of his clergy, 
whom he was utterly unable to reform. Priests who were content 
with their own wives and did not take those of other men were 
reputed virtuous and holy ; and he complains that in his own archi- 
diaconate he was powerless to prevent the ordination and ministry of 
the sons of priests, even while they were living in open adultery 
with women whom they had taken from their husbands. 4 How little 
sympathy, indeed, all efforts to enforce the rule called forth is in- 
structively shown by the wondering contempt with which a writer, 
strictly papalist in his tendencies, comments upon the indiscreet 



1 Statuitur et hoc semper memora- 
bile, secundum decreta canonum, pres- 
byteros parochianos castos et sine 
uxoribus esse debere : uxorati vero 
presbyteri missam a nemine audien- 
dam esse. — Annal. Bosoviens. ann. 
1181. 

Statuitur quoque ab omnibus, se- 
cundum decreta canonum, illud anti- 
quum, quod semper erit innovandum, 
presbyteros castos et sine uxoribus 
esse, missam autem uxorati presbyteri 
neminem audire debere. — Cbron. San- 
petrin. Erfurt, ann. 1131. 

Statuitur etiam hoc semper memora- 



bile, per decreta canonum presbyteros 
parrochianos castos et sine uxoribus 
esse debere, uxorati vero presbyteri 
missam a nemine audiendam esse. — 
Chron. Pegaviens. Continuat. ann. 
1131. 

2 Ruperti Tuitens. Comment, in 
Apocalyps. Lib. II. cap. ii. 

8 Hist. Monast. S. Laurent. Leodiens. 
Lib. v. c. 39 (Martene Ampliss. 
Collect. IV. 1005). 

4 Henrici Salisburg. Archidiac. de 
Calam. Eccles. Salisburg. cap. ix. 



248 



CENTRAL EUROPE. 



reformatory zeal of Meinhard, Archbishop of Treves. Elevated to 
this lofty dignity in 1128, he at once undertook to force his clergy 
to obey the rule by the most stringent measures, and speedily became 
so odious that he was obliged to leave his bishopric within the year ; 
and the chronicler who tells the story has only words of reprobation 
for the unfortunate prelate. 1 Even as late as the end of the twelfth 
century, a chronicler of the popes, writing in southern Germany, 
calls Gregory VII. an enforcer of impossibilities — "prseceptor im- 
possibilium" — because he had endeavored to make good the rule of 
celibacy ; 2 and a council of Ratisbon, in the thirteenth century, while 
lamenting the fact that there were few priests who did not openly 
keep their concubines and children in their houses, quotes the canon 
of Hildebrand forbidding the laity to attend at the ministrations of 
such persons, but without venturing to hint at its enforcement. 3 



Hungary had been Christianized at a time when the obligation of 
celibacy was but lightly regarded, though it had not as yet become 
obsolete. In reducing the dreaded and barbarous Majjars to civili- 
zation, the managers of the movement might well smooth the path 
and interpose as few obstacles as possible to the attainment of so 
desirable a consummation. It is probable, therefore, that restrictions 
on marriage, as applied to the priesthood, were lightly passed over, 
and, not being insisted on, were disregarded by all parties. Even 
the decretals of Nicholas II. and the fulminations of Gregory VII. 
appear to have never penetrated into the kingdom of St. Stephen, 
for sacerdotal celibacy seems to have been unknown among the 
Hungarians until the close of the century. The first allusion to it 
occurs in the synod of Zabolcs, held in 1092, under the auspices of 
St. Ladislas II., and is of a nature to show not only that it was an 
innovation on established usages, but also that the subject required 
tender handling to reconcile it to the weakness of undisciplined 
human nature. After the bitter denunciations and cruelly harsh 



1 " Deinde dum nimio zelo recti- 
tudinis de incontinentia clericorum 
multa sseve disponeret, sine condi- 
mento discrecionis, magnam sibi com- 
paravit invidiam, et quam nee dici fas 
est, acquisivit infamiam." — He went 
to Italy, seeking aid from Honorius 
II., but was captured by Conrad the 
Swabian, the rival of the Emperor 
Lothair, and died of affliction in his 



prison at Parma, October 1st, 1130. 
(G-est. Trevirorum Continuat. c. 27, 
28.) 

2 Anon. Zwetlensis Hist. Roman. 
Pontif. No. CLXI. (Pez, T. I. P. iii. 
p. 385.) 

3 Concil. Katisbonens. saec. XIII. c. 
v. (Printed by Schneller, Straubing, 
1785.) 



HUNGARY. 



249 



measures which the popes had been promulgating for nearly half a 
century, there is an impressive contrast in the mildness with which 
the Hungarian church offered indulgence to those legitimately united 
to a first wife, until the Holy See could be consulted for a definitive 
decision; 1 and though marriages with second wives, widows, or 
divorced women were pronounced null and void, the disposition to 
evade a direct meeting of the question is manifested in a regulation 
which provided that if a priest united himself to his female slave 
"uxoris in locum," the woman should be sold; but if he refused to 
part with her, he was simply to pay her price to the bishop. 2 
Whether or not the pope's decision was actually sought, we have no 
means of knowing ; if it was, his inevitable verdict received little 
respect, for the Synod of Gran, held about the year 1099 by the 
Primate Seraphin of Gran, only ventured to recommend moderation 
to married priests, while its endeavor to enforce the rule prohibiting 
marriage after the assumption of orders shows how utterly the recog- 
nized discipline of the church was neglected. The consent of wives 
was also required before married priests could be elevated to the 
episcopate, and after consecration separation was strictly enjoined, 
affording still further evidence of the laxity allowed to the other 
grades. The iteration of the rules respecting digami and marriage 
with widows also indicates how difficult was the effort to resuscitate 
those well-known regulations, although they were universally admitted 
to be binding on all ecclesiastics. 3 

King Coloman, whose reign extended from 1095 to 1114, has the 
credit of being the first who definitely enjoined immaculate purity 
on the Hungarian priesthood. His laws, as collected by Alberic, 
have no dates, and therefore we are unable to affix precise epochs to 
them; but his legislation on the subject appears to have been pro- 
gressive, for we find edicts containing injunctions respecting digami 
and irregular unions in terms which indicate that single marriages 
were not interfered with ; and these may reasonably be deemed earlier 



1 Presbyteris autem qui prima et 
legitima duxere conjugia, indulgentia 
ad tempus datur, propter vinculum 
pacis et unitatem Spiritus Sancti, quo- 
usque nobis in hoc Domini Apostolici 
paternitas consilietur. — Synod. Zabolcs 
ann. 1092 c. 3, or Decret. St. Ladisl. 
Lib. i. c. 3. (Batthyani, I. 434-5.) 

2 Synod. Zabolcs c. 1, 2. — Any pre- 



late assenting to such illicit unions, 
and not insisting on immediate sepa- 
ration, was punishable to a reasonable 
extent (Ibid. c. 4). 

3 Synod. Strigonens. n. ("Batthyani, 
II. 121-8). Peterffy's emendation of 
"voluerint" for "noluerint," in the 
clause respecting digami, can hardly be 
questioned. 






250 CENTRAL EUROPE. 

than other laws which formally prohibit the elevation to the diaconate 
of an unmarried man without exacting from him a vow of continence, 
or of a married man without the consent of his wife. The import of 
this latter condition is explained by another law, which provided that 
no married man should officiate at the altar unless his wife professed 
continence, and was furnished by her husband with the means of 
dwelling apart from him. 1 As these stringent regulations form part 
of the canons of a council held by Archbishop Seraphin about the 
year 1109, 2 they were probably borrowed from that council by Colo- 
man, and incorporated into his laws at a period somewhat later. 

I have not met with any indications of the results of the legislation 
which thus combined the influence of the temporal and ecclesiastical 
authorities. That it effected little, however, is apparent from the 
evidence afforded by Dalmatia, at that time a province of Hungary. 
Shortly before it lost its independence, its duke, Dimitri, resolved to 
assume the crown of royalty, and purchased the assent of Gregory 
VII. at the price of acknowledging him as feudal superior. Gregory 
took advantage of Dimitri 's aspirations to further the plans of reform, 
of which he never lost sight ; for, in the coronation oath taken in 
1076 before Gebizo, the papal legate, the new king swore that he 
would take such measures as would insure the chastity of all ecclesi- 
astics, from the bishop to the subdeacon. 3 The new dynasty did not 
last long, for before the end of the century St. Ladislas united the 
province of Dalmatia to the kingdom of Hungary ; but neither the 
oath of Dimitri, the laws of Coloman, nor the canons of the national 
councils succeeded in eradicating the custom of priestly marriage. 
When we find, in 1185, Urban III. in approving the acts of the 
synod of Spalatro, graciously expressing his approbation of its pro- 
hibiting the marriage of priests, and desiring that the injunction 
should be extended so as to include the diaconate, 4 we see that mar- 
riage must have been openly enjoyed by all ranks, that the synod 
had not ventured to include in the restriction any but the highest 
order, and that Urban himself did not undertake to apply the rule to 
subdeacons, although they had been specially included in Dimitri's 
oath. Yet still pope and synod labored in vain, for fourteen years 
later, in 1199, another national council complained that priests kept 



1 Decret. Coloman. cap. 41, 42, 
Comp. cap. 27 and 37. 



2 Synod. Vencellina, circa 1109. 274. 



Batthyani, I. 431. 

Epist. Urbani apud Batthyani, II. 



POLAND. 



251 



both wives and benefices. It therefore commanded that those who 
indulged in this species of adultery should either dismiss their partners 
in guilt, and undergo due penance, or else should give up their 
churches ; while no married man should be admitted to the diaconate, 
unless his wife would take a vow of continence before the bishop. 1 
Even yet, however, the subdiaconate is not alluded to, although the 
legates who presided over the council were those of Innocent III. 

Of how little avail were these efforts is shown by the national 
council held at Vienna as late as 1267, by Cardinal Guido, legate of 
Clement IV. It was still found necessary to order the deprivation 
of priests and deacons who persisted in retaining their wives ; while 
the special clauses respecting those who married after taking orders 
prove that such unions were frequent enough to require, tender con- 
sideration in removing the evil. The subdiaconate, also, was declared 
liable to the same regulations, but the resistance of the members of 
that order was probably stubborn, for the canons were suspended in 
their favor until further instructions should be received from the 
pope. 2 

Poland was equally remiss in enforcing the canons on her clergy. 
The leaning of the Slavonic races towards the Greek church ren- 
dered them, in fact, peculiarly intractable, and marriage was com- 
monly practised by the clergy at least until the close of the twelfth 
century. 3 At length the efforts of Rome were extended to that 
distant region, and in 1197 the papal legate, Cardinal Peter of Capua, 
held the synod of Lanciski, when the priests were peremptorily 
ordered to dismiss their wives and concubines, who, in the words of 
the historian, were at that time universally and openly kept. 4 The 
result of this seems to have amounted to little, for in 1207 we find 
Innocent III. sharply reproving the bishops of the province of 
Gnesen because married men were publicly admitted to ecclesi- 
astical dignities, and canons took no shame in the families growing 
up around them. The children of priests were brought up to the 
sacred profession of their fathers, assisted them in their ministrations, 
and succeeded to their benefices. Whether or not the other disorders 



1 Synod. Dalmatiae aim. 1199 
(Batthyani, II. 289-90). 

2 Concil. Vienn. ann. 1267 (Bat- 
thyani, II. 415-17). 

3 Complures ea tempestate sacerdotes 



uxoribus velut jure legitimo utebantur. 
— Dlugosz, ad ann. 1197 (apud Kra- 
sinski, I. 52). 



4 Staravolsc. Concil. Epit. 
duin. T. VI. P. n. p. 1937. 



ap. 



Har- 



252 CENTRAL EUROPE. 

which Innocent designated as infecting the churches were the result 
of the carnal affections which thus superseded the spiritual we may 
fairly doubt, in view of the abuses still prevailing in more favored 
regions. 1 The effort was continued, and was apparently at length 
successful, at least in the western portions of the Polish church, for 
at the council of Breslau, held in 1279, there is no mention of 
wives, and the constitution of Guido, legate of Clement IV., is 
quoted, depriving of benefices those who openly kept concubines. 2 

The church of Sweden was no purer than its neighbors. That 
the rule was recognized there at a tolerably early period is shown by 
the fact that when the people of Scania, about the year 1180, revolted 
against the exactions of Waldemar I. of Denmark, they demanded to 
be released from the oppression of tithes and that the clergy should 
be married. Singularly enough, the clerks stood by their bishop, 
Absalom, when he laid an interdict on the province, and the arms of 
Waldemar speedily subdued the revolt. 3 Not much, however, was 
gained for church discipline by this. In 1204, the Archbishop of 
Lunden reported to Innocent III. that he had used every endeavor 
to enforce the canons and had brought many of his priests to observe 
chastity, but that there still were many who persisted in retaining 
their women, whom they treated as though they were legitimate 
wives, with fidelity and conjugal affection. To this Innocent replied 
that the recalcitrants must be coerced by suspension, and, if necessary, 
by deprivation of benefice. 4 How little result this achieved is evident 
when we find the archbishop again writing to Innocent III. com- 
plaining that the Swedish priests persisted in living with their wives, 
and that they moreover claimed to have a papal dispensation per- 
mitting it. Innocent, in reply, cautiously abstained from pronouncing 
an opinion as to the validity of these pretensions until he should have 
an opportunity of examining the document to which they appealed. 5 
The efforts at this time were fruitless, for, in 1248, we find the 
Cardinal of St. Sabina as legate of Innocent IV. holding a council 
at Schening, of which the principal object was to reform these abuses, 
and so firmly were they established, that the Swedes were considered 



1 Innocent. PP. III. Eegest. Lib. 
ix. Epist. 235. 

2 Concil. Vratislaviens. ann. 1279, c. 
iii. (Hartzheim III. 



3 Saxo. Grrammat. Hist. Dan. Lib. 
xv. (Ed. 1576, p. 327). 

4 Innocent. PP. III. Eegest. vi. 198 

5 Innocent. III. Eegest. xvi. 118. 



SWEDEN — DENMARK. 



258 



as schismatics of the Greek church, in consequence of the marriage 
of their priests. The council supported by the royal power, succeeded 
in forcing the Swedish ecclesiastics to give up their wives, by a liberal 
use of all the punishments then in vogue, together with the significant 
threat of abandoning them to the tender mercies of the secular 
tribunals. 1 



In Denmark and along the northern coasts of Germany, there was 
equal delay in enforcing the canon of celibacy. It is suggestive of 
some powerful intercession in favor of the married clergy when we 
see Paschal II., in 1117, writing to the King of Denmark that the 
rule was imperative, and that he could admit of no exceptions to it. 2 
His insistance, however, was of little avail. In 1266, Cardinal 
Guido, legate of Clement IV., held a council at Bremen, where he 
was obliged to take rigorous measures to put an end to this Nicolitan 
heresy. All married priests, deacons, and subdeacons were pro- 
nounced incapable of holding any ecclesiastical office whatever. 
Children born of such unions were declared infamous, and incapable 
of inheritance, and any property received by gift or otherwise from 
their fathers was confiscated. Those who permitted their daughters, 
sisters, or other female relatives to contract such marriages, or gave 
them up in concubinage to priests, were excluded from the church. 
That a previous struggle had taken place on the subject is evident 
from the penalties threatened against the prelates who were in the 
habit of deriving a revenue from the protection of these irregularities, 
and from an allusion to the armed resistance, made by the married 
and concubinary priests with their friends, to all efforts to check 
their scandalous conduct. 3 

In Friesland, too, the efforts of the sacerdotalists were long set at 
naught. In 1219 Emo, Abbot of Wittewerum, describing the dis- 
astrous inundations which afflicted his country, considers them as a 
punishment sent to chastise the vices of the land, and among the 
disorders which were peculiarly obnoxious to the wrath of God he 
enumerates the public marriage of the priests, the hereditary trans- 
mission of benefices, and the testamentary provision made by ecclesi- 



1 Prima intentio et cura Cardinalis 
Sabinensis in hoc concilio erat revo- 
care Suecos et Gothos a schismate 
Grsecorum, in quo presbyteri et sacer- 
dotes, ductis publicis uxoribus con- 



sensisse videbantur. — Harduin. VII. 
423. 

2 Jaffe, Eegesta, p. 515-6. — Paschal. 
II. Epist. 497. 

3 Concil. Bremens. ann. 1266 (Hartz- 
heim IV. 580). 



254 



CENTRAL EUROPE. 



astics for their children out of the property which should accrue to 
the church ; while his references to the canon law inhibiting these 
practices, show that these transgressions were not excusable through 
ignorance. 1 The warning was unheeded, for Abbot Emo alludes 
incidentally, on various subsequent occasions, to the hereditary trans- 
mission of several deaneries as a matter of course. 2 The deans in 
Friesland were ecclesiastics of high position, each having six or more 
parishes under his jurisdiction, which he governed under legatine 
power from the Bishop of Munster. When, in 1271, the people rose 
against them, exasperated by their intolerable exactions, in some 
temporary truce the deans gave their children as hostages ; and 
when, after their expulsion, Gerard of Munster came to their assist- 
ance by excommunicating the rebels, the latter defended the move- 
ment by the argument that the deans had violated the laws of the 
church by handing down their positions from father to son, and that 
each generation imitated the incontinence of its predecessor. 3 Hilde- 
brand might have applauded this reasoning, but his days were past. 
The church by this time had gained the position to which it had 
aspired, and no longer invoked secular assistance to enforce its laws. 
Even Abbot Menco, while admitting the validity of the popular 
argument, claimed that such questions were reserved for the decision 
of the church alone, and that the people must not interfere. 



After thus marking the slow progress of the Hildebrandine move- 
ment in these frontier lands of Christendom, let us see what efforts 
were required to establish the reform in regions less remote. 



1 Emonis Chron. ann. 1219. 

2 ' ' Eodem tempore defunctus est 
praefatus decanus (Herbrandus) pos- 
sessor ecclesise in Husquert, tertius 
heres illius norninis, relicto parvulo 
ejusdem nominis." (Emonis Chron. 
ann. 1231.) — and Emo alludes to him 
as " honesto viro Herbrando. " 



" Obiit G-eyco decanus in Eirmetium 
vir per omnia seecularibus artibus 
idoneus, et bene religiosus et obsequi- 
osus. Successit ei Sicco, quartus a 
proavo Sigrepo." — Ibid. ann. 1233. 

3 Menconis Chron. "Werens. ann. 
1271. 



XVI. 
FRANCE 



Gregory VII. had not been so engrossed in his quarrels with the 
Empire as to neglect the prosecution of his favorite schemes of reform 
elsewhere. If he displayed somewhat less of energy and zeal in 
dealing with the ecclesiastical foibles of other countries, it was per- 
haps because the political complications which gave a special zest to 
his efforts in Germany were wanting, and because there was no 
organized resistance supported by the temporal authorities. Yet the 
inertia of passive non-compliance long rendered his endeavors and 
those of his successors equally nugatory. 

As early as 1056 we find Victor II., by means of his vicars at the 
council of Toulouse, enjoining on the priesthood separation from their 
wives, under penalty of excommunication and deprivation of function 
and benefice. 1 This was followed up in 1060 by Nicholas II., who 
sought through his envoys to enforce the observance of his decretals 
on celibacy in France, and under the presidency of his legate the 
council of Tours in that year adopted a canon of the most decided 
character. All who, since the promulgation of the decretal of 1060, 
had continued in the performance of their sacred functions while still 
preserving relations with their wives and concubines were deprived 
of their grades without hope of restoration ; and the same irrevocable 
penalty was denounced against those who in the future should 
endeavor to combine the incompatible duties of husband and minister 
of Christ. 2 

In what spirit these threats and injunctions were likely to be 
received may be gathered from an incident which occurred, probably 
about this time. A French bishop, as in duty bound, excommuni- 
cated one of his deacons for marrying. The clergy of the diocese, 



Concil. Tolosan. ann. 1056 can. vii. 2 Concil. Turon. aim. 1060 c. 6. 



256 



FEANOE, 



keen to appreciate the prospect of future trouble, rallied around their 
persecuted brother, and rose in open rebellion against the prelate. 
The latter, apparently, was unable to maintain his position, and the 
matter was referred for adjudication to the celebrated Berenger of 
Tours. Although, in view of the papal jurisprudence of the period, 
the bishop would seem to have acted with leniency, yet Berenger 
blamed both parties for their precipitancy and quarrelsome humor, 
and decided that the excommunication of a deacon for marrying was 
contrary to the canons, unless rendered unavoidable by the contumacy 
of the offender. 1 

Even more significant was the scene which occurred in 1074 in 
the council of Paris, where the holy St. Gauthier, Abbot of Pon- 
thoise, undertook to sustain the decretal by which Gregory VII. 
prohibited attendance on the masses of married and concubinary 
priests. The assembly manifested its disapprobation of the measure 
in a manner so energetic that its unlucky advocate, after being furi- 
ously berated and soundly pummelled, was glad to escape with his 
life from the hands of his indignant brethren. 2 

When such was the spirit of the ecclesiastical body, there was 
little to be expected from any internal attempt at reform. At the 
stormy synod of Poitiers, in 1078, the papal legate, Hugh, Bishop 
of Die, succeeded in obtaining the adoption of a canon which threat- 
ened with excommunication all who should knowingly listen to the 
mass of a concubinary or simoniacal priest, 3 but this seems to have 
met with little response. Coercion from without was evidently requi- 
site, and in this case, as we have seen, Gregory did not shrink from 
subjecting the church to the temporal power. In Normandy, for 
instance, a synod held at Lisieux in 1055 had commanded the degra- 
dation of priests who resided with wives or concubines. This was, 
of course, ineffective, and in 1072 John, Archbishop of Rouen, held 
a council in his cathedral city, where he renewed that canon in terms 
which show how completely all orders and dignitaries were habitually 
liable to its penalties. 4 The Norman clergy were not disposed to 



1 Ceterurn, quod excommunicavit 
diaconum suum propter ductam uxo- 
rem, contra canones fecisse videtur 



ipsms. — Epist. Berengar. Turon. (Mar- 
tene Thesaur. I. 195-6). It must be 
"borne in mind that the persecution of 
Berenger arose solely from his theo- 



logical subtleties, and that objections 
to celibacy formed no portion of his 
errors. 

2 Art de Verifier les Dates, s. v. 

3 Concil. Pictaviens. ann. 1078 can. 9. 

4 Concil. Kotomag. ann. 1072 can. 16 
" de clericis uxoratis." 



NORMANDY — SECULAR INTERFERENCE. 257 

submit quietly to this abridgement of their accustomed privileges, 
and they expressed their dissent by raising a terrible clamor and 
driving their archbishop from the council with a shower of stones, 
from which he barely escaped alive. 1 At length, in view of the utter 
failure of all ecclesiastical legislation, the laity were called in. Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, therefore, in 1080, assisted the Archbishop of 
Rouen in holding a synod at Lillebonne, where the stern presence 
of the suzerain prevented any unseemly resistance to the adoption 
of most unpalatable regulations. All who were in holy orders were 
forbidden, under any pretext, to keep women in their houses, and if, 
when accused of disobedience, they were unable to prove themselves 
innocent, their benefices were irretrievably forfeited. If the accusa- 
tion was made by the ecclesiastical officials, the offender was to be 
tried by the episcopal court, but if his parishioners or feudal superior 
were the complainants, he was to be brought before a mixed tribunal, 
composed of the squires of his parish and the officials of the bishop. 
This startling invasion of the dearest privileges of the church was 
declared by William to proceed from no desire to interfere with the 
jurisdiction of his bishops, but to be a temporary expedient, rendered 
necessary by their negligence. Nor was this remarkable measure 
the only thing that renders the synod of Lillebonne worthy of note, 
for it affords us the earliest authoritative indication of a practice 
which subsequently became a standing disgrace to the church. The 
fifth canon declares that no priest shall be forced to give anything to 
the bishop or to the officers of the diocese beyond their lawful dues, 
and especially that no money shall be exacted on account of women 
kept by clerks. 2 A tribute known as "cullagium'' became at times 
a recognized source of revenue, in consideration of which the weak- 
nesses of human nature were excused, and ecclesiastics were allowed 
to enjoy in security the society of their concubines. We shall see 
hereafter that this infamous custom continued to flourish until the 
sixteenth century, despite the most strenuous and repeated endeavors 
to remove so grievous a scandal. 

It is probable that the expedient of mixed courts for the trial of 
married and concubinary priests was not adopted without the con- 
currence of Gregory, who was willing to make almost any sacrifice 
necessary to accomplish his purpose. That they were organized and 



1 Orderic. Vital. P. n. Lib. iv. c. 2. 

2 Concil. Juliobonens. ann. 1080 can. 
3, 5 (Orderic. Vital. P. it. Lib. v. c. 6. 



— Harduin. Concil. T. VI. P. I. p. 1599). 
— Propter eorum feminas nulla pecuniae 
emendatio exigatur. 



17 



258 FRANCE. 

performed the functions delegated to them is shown by a reference 
in a charter of 1088 to one held at Caumont, which required a priest 
to abandon either his wife or his church. 1 So far, indeed, was Greg- 
ory from protesting against this violation of ecclesiastical immunities, 
that he was willing even to connive at the abuses which immediately 
crept into the system, and to purchase the assistance of the laity by 
allowing them to lay sacrilegious hands on the temporalities of the 
church. Many of the nobles who thus assisted in expelling the 
offending clergy seized the tithes and retained them. The papal 
legate, Hugh, Bishop of Die — better known by his subsequent pri- 
matial dignity of Lyons — proceeded against these invaders of church 
property in the usual manner, and excommunicated them as a matter 
of course. Gregory, however, who under ordinary circumstances 
would have promptly consigned the spoilers to the bottomless pit, 
now virtually took their side. He discreetly declined to confirm the 
excommunication, reproved his legate for superserviceable zeal, and 
ordered him in future to be more guarded and temperate in his pro- 
ceedings. 2 

Church and state — the zeal of the ecclesiastic and the avarice of 
the noble — vainly united to break down the stubbornness of the 
Norman priesthood, for marriage continued to be enjoyed as openly 
as ever. The only effect of the attempted reform, indeed, appeared 
to be that when a priest entered into matrimony he took a solemn 
vow never to give up his wife, a measure prompted doubtless by the 
fears of the bride and her kindred. The nuptials were public ; male 
issue succeeded to benefices by a recognized primogeniture, and female 
children received their fathers' churches as dower, when other re- 
sources were wanting. About the beginning of the twelfth century, 
three enthusiastic ascetic reformers, the celebrated Robert d'Arbrissel, 
founder of Fontevrault, Bernard Abbot of Tiron, and Vitalis of 
Mortain traversed Normandy and preached with great earnestness 
against these abuses, the result of which was that they nearly came 
to an untimely end at the hands of the indignant pastors and their 
more indignant spouses. On one occasion, when Bernard was preach- 
ing at Coutances, a married archdeacon assailed him, with a crowd 
of priests and clerks, asking how he, a monk, dead to the world, 
presumed to preach to the living. Bernard replied that Samson had 

1 Pauli Carnot. Yet. Agano. Lib. viii. c. 11. 

2 Gregor. VII. Kegist. Lib. ix. Epist. 5. 



BRITANNY — FLANDERS. 



259 



slain his foes with the jaw-bone of a dead ass, and then proceeded 
with so moving a discourse on Samson, that the archdeacon was 
converted, and interfered to save him from the mob. 1 

If William the Conqueror found his advantage in thus assisting 
the hopeless reform within his duchy of Normandy, he had no hesi- 
tation in obstructing it when his policy demanded such a course in 
his subject province of Britanny. During the three and a half cen- 
turies through which the Breton church maintained its independence 
of the archiepiscopal see of Tours, its metropolis was Dol. Judhael, 
who occupied its lofty seat, not only obtained it by simony, but sullied 
it by a public marriage ; and when the offspring of this illicit union 
reached maturity he portioned them from the property of the 
church. This prolonged violation of the canons attracted the atten- 
tion of Gregory soon after his accession, and in 1076 he informed 
William that he had deposed the offender. William, however, saw 
fit to defend the scandal, and refused to receive Evenus, Abbot of St. 
Melanius, whom Gregory had appointed as a successor. 2 Judhael, 
indeed, was no worse than his suffragans. For three generations the 
diocese of Quimper was held by father, son, and grandson ; while 
the Bishops of Rennes, Vannes, and Nantes were openly married, 
and their wives enjoyed the recognized rank of countesses, as an 
established right. 3 How much improvement resulted from the efforts 
of Gregory and his legate Hugh may be estimated from the descrip- 
tion, in general terms, of the iniquities ascribed to the Breton clergy, 
both secular and regular, in the early part of the next century, by 
Paschal II. when granting the pallium to Baldric, Archbishop of 
Dol. All classes are described as indulging in enormities hateful to 
God and man, and as having no hesitation in setting the canons at 
defiance. In Britanny, as in Wales and Spain, the centralizing 
influence of Rome was at fault, and priestly marriage was persevered 
in long after it had been abrogated elsewhere. 4 



In Flanders, Count Robert the Frisian and Adela, his mother, were 
well disposed to second the reformatory measures of Gregory, but, 



1 G-aufridi Grossi Vit. Bernardi Ti- 
ronens. c. 6 \\ 51-54. 

2 Gregor. VII. Epist. Extrav. 29.— 
Epist. in Martene Thesaur. III. 871 
-6. 

3 Roujoux, Hist, de Bretagne, II. 
98-99. The independence affected by 
the Breton church is well shown in a 



singularly impertinent letter addressed 
to Leo IX. by the clergy of Nantes, re- 
fusing to receive a bishop appointed by 
him, after the degradation for simony 
of Prodicus by the council of Rheims 
in 1050 (Martene Thesaur. I. 172-3). 



4 Martene Thesaur. III. 882. 
dan and Stubbs II. 96. 



-Had- 



260 



FRANCE. 



doubting their right to eject the offenders, they applied to him, in 
1076, for instructions. His answers were unequivocal, urging them 
to the most prompt and summary proceedings. 1 The spirit in which 
the clergy met the attack was manifested by the incident already 
described, when, in 1077, an unfortunate zealot was burned at the 
stake in Cambrai for maintaining the propriety of the papal decretals. 
The same disposition, though fortunately leading to less deplorable 
results, was exhibited in Artois. At the instance of Adela, Robert, 
in 1072, had founded the Priory of Watten, near St. Omer. Despite 
this powerful interest and patronage, the house had a severe struggle 
for existence, as its prior, Otfrid, lent his influence to support the 
reform and to enforce the decrees of Gregory. Reproaches and 
curses were showered upon the infant community, and it was openly 
threatened with fire and sword, until the unfortunate brethren felt 
equally insecure within their walls and abroad. At length the 
Countess Adela took Otfrid with her on a pilgrimage to Rome, and 
there the holy man procured from Gregory a confirmation of the 
privileges of his house. On his return, he found that this instrument 
only made the persecution more vehement. Accusations of all kinds 
were made against the priory, and its enemies succeeded in causing 
the brethren to be brought for trial before the local synod, where the 
production of the papal charter was ordered. It was at once pro- 
nounced a forgery, was taken away by force, and was retained by the 
Bishop, Drogo of Terouane, in spite of all remonstrance. 2 

The opposition of the clergy was not lessened by the manner in 
which the secular authorities exercised the power bestowed upon 
them. Count Robert saw the advantages derivable from the position 
of affairs and seems to have been resolved to turn it thoroughly to 
account. Among other modes adopted was that of the "jus spolii," 
by which he seized the effects of dying ecclesiastics, turning their 
families out of doors and disinheriting the heirs. These arbitrary 
proceedings he defended on the ground of the incontinence of the 
sufferers, boldly declaring that wicked priests were no priests — as if, 
groaned the indignant clerks, sinful men were not men. 3 In 1091, 



1 Gregor. VII. Kegist. Lib. iv. 
Epistt. 10, 11. 

2 Ebrardi Chron. Watinens. cap. 
22-3. Ebrard was a contemporary, a 
disciple of Otfrid, and therefore his 
statement of the motives of the perse- 
cution is entitled to credence. 



3 " Addens malos sacerdotes sacer- 
dotes non esse, acsi peccator homo 
non esset homo." From the tenor of 
Kobert's defence it is evident that it 
was the children of the clerks whom he 
disinherited. The documents are in 
Warnkonig, Hist, de Elandre, I. 330-3 
(Bruxelles, 1835). 



FLANDERS — SECULAR TYRANNY. 261 

the Flemish priests complained of these acts to Urban II., and he 
vainly endeavored to interfere in their behalf. 1 Finding this resource 
fail, they appealed to their metropolitan, Renaud, Archbishop of 
Rheims, who by active measures succeeded in putting an end to the 
abuse in 1092. 

Amid all this the church proved powerless to enforce its laws, and 
again it called upon the feudal authority for assistance — this time in 
a manner by which it admitted its impotence on a question so vital. 
In 1099, Manasses of Rheims held a provincial synod at St. Omer, 
which instructed the Count of Flanders, Robert the Hierosolymitan, 
to seize the wives of all priests who after excommunication declined 
to abandon their guilty partners ; and in this he was not to ask or 
wait for the assent of the bishop of the diocese. The sturdy Cru- 
sader would doubtless have carried out this order to the letter, with 
all its attendant cruelty and misery, but the clergy of the province 
united in remonstrances so vehement that Manasses was forced to 
abandon his position. He accordingly requested Robert on no 
account to disturb the married priests and their wives, or to permit 
his nobles to do so, except when assistance was demanded by the 
bishops. He acknowledged the injustice he had committed in over- 
slaughing the constituted authorities of the church, and deprecated 
the rapine and spoliation which so ill-advised a proceeding might 
cause. At the same time he admonished his suffragans to proceed 
vigorously against all who married in orders, and to call on the 
seigneurial power to coerce those who should prove contumacious. 2 

Harsh and violent as were the measures thus threatened, there 
appears to have been extreme hesitation in carrying them out. A 
certain clerk known as Robert of Artois committed the unpardonable 
indiscretion of marrying a widow, and openly resisted all the efforts 
of his bishop to reduce him to obedience. Not only his original 
crime, but his subsequent contumacious rebellion would assuredly 
justify the severest chastisement, yet both the secular and ecclesi- 
astical powers of the province seem to have been at fault, for it was 
found necessary to ask the interference of no less a personage than 
Richard, Bishop of Albano, then enjoying the dignity of papal legate 
in France. In 1104 the legate accordingly addressed the Count of 
Flanders with the very moderate request that the obstinate rebel and 
his abettors should be held as excommunicate until they should rec- 



1 TJrbani PP. II. Epist. 70. 2 Lambert. Atrebat. Epist. 60. 






262 FEANCE. 

oncile themselves to their bishop. Robert finally appealed to Rome 
itself, but in the end was obliged to succumb. Similar was the case 
of two Artesian deacons who refused to abandon their wives until 
Lambert, the bishop of Artois, excommunicated them, when they 
travelled to Rome in hopes of reconciliation to the church. Paschal 
II. absolved them on their taking a solemn oath upon the Gospels 
to live chastely in future, and he sent them back to Lambert with 
instructions to keep a careful watch upon them. 1 These cases, which 
chance to remain on record, show how obstinately the clergy held 
to their wives and how difficult it was to convince them that the 
authorities of the church were determined to enforce the canons. 
We therefore need not be surprised to find Paschal II., after the year 
1100, writing to the clergy of Terouane, expressing his astonishment 
that, in spite of so many decretals of popes and canons of councils, 
they still adhered to their consorts, some of them openly and some 
secretly. To remedy this, he has nothing but a repetition of the 
old threat of deprivation. 2 

The confusion which this attempted reformation caused in France 
was apparently not so aggravated as we have seen it in Germany, 
and yet it was sufficiently serious. Guibert de Nogent relates that 
in his youth commenced the persecution of the married priests by 
Rome, when a cousin of his, a layman of flagrant and excessive 
licentiousness, made himself conspicuous by his attacks on the fail- 
ings of the clergy. The family were anxious to provide for young 
Guibert, who was destined to the church, and the cousin used his 
influence with the patron of a benefice to oust the married incumbent 
and bestow the preferment on Guibert. The priest thus forcibly 
ejected abandoned neither his wife nor his functions, but relieved his 
mind by excommunicating every day, in the Mass, Guibert's mother 
and all her family, until the good woman's fears were so excited that 
she abandoned the prebend which she had obtained with so much 
labor. 3 We can readily conceive this incident to be a type of what 
was occurring in e^very corner of the kingdom, when, in an age of 
brute force, the reverence which was the only defence of the priest- 
hood was partially destroyed, and the people hardly knew whether 



1 Lambert. Atrebat. Epist. 84— Pas- | 2 Paschalis PP. II. Epist. 415. 
chalis PP II Epist. 134.-Lambert. | „ Guib Noviogen t. de Vita Sua 
Epist. apud Baluz. et Mansi II. 150. j -^., j .. & 



FRUITLESS EFFORTS. 



263 



they were to adore their pastors as representatives of God or to 
dread them as the powerful ministers of evil. 



When the religious ardor of Europe rose to the wild excitement 
that culminated in the Crusades, and Pope Urban II. astutely- 
availed himself of the movement to place the church in possession 
of a stronger influence over the minds of men than it had ever 
before enjoyed, it was to no purpose that the great council of Cler- 
mont, in 1095, took the opportunity to proclaim in the most solemn 
manner the necessity of perfect purity in ministers of the altar, to 
denounce irrevocable expulsion for contravention of the rule, and to 
forbid the children of ecclesiastics from entering the church except 
as monks or canons. 1 It was the weightiest exposition of church 
discipline, and was promulgated under circumstances to give it the 
widest publicity and the highest authority. Yet, within a few years, 
we find Gualo, Bishop of Paris, applying to Ivo of Chartres for 
advice as to what ought to be done with a canon of his church who 
had recently married, and Ivo in reply recommending as a safe 
course that the marriage be held valid, but that the offender be 
relieved of his stipend and functions. 2 His answer, moreover, is 
written in a singularly undecided tone, and an elaborate argument 
is presented as though the matter were still open to discussion, 
although Ivo's laborious compilations of the canon law show that 
he was thoroughly familiar with the ancient discipline which the 
depravity of his generation had rendered obsolete. 3 Hardly less 
significant is another epistle in which Ivo calls the attention of 
Daimbert, Archbishop of Sens, to the conduct of one of his digni- 
taries who publicly maintained two concubines and was preparing to 
marry a third. He urges Daimbert to put an end to the scandal, 
and suggests that if he is unable to accomplish it single-handed, he 
should summon two or three of his suffragans to his assistance. 4 
Either of these instances is a sufficient confession of the utter futility 
of the ceaseless exertions which for half a century the church had 
been making to enforce her discipline. Nor, perhaps, can her ill— 



1 Concil. Claromont. can. 9, 10, 25. 

In Lent of the following year (1096) 
Urban caused these canons to be re- 
ceived by a provincial council held 
under his auspices at Tours. — Bernald. 
Constant, ann. 1096. 



2 Ivon. Carnot. Epist. 218. 

3 Ivon. Decret. P. VI. c. 50 sqq. 
Panorm. Lib. in. c. 84 sqq. 

* Ivon. Epist. 200. 



264 



FRANCE. 



success be wondered at when we consider how unworthy were the 
hands to which was frequently intrusted the administering of the 
law and the laxity of opinion which viewed the worst transgressions 
with indulgence. The archdeacons were the officials to whom was 
specially confided the supervision over sacerdotal morals, and yet, 
when a man occupying that responsible position, like Aldebert of 
Le Mans, publicly surrounded himself with a harem, and took no 
shame from the resulting crowd of offspring, so little did his conduct 
shock the sensibilities of the age that he was elevated to the episcopal 
chair, and only the stern voice of Ivo could be heard reproving the 
measureless scandal. 1 



Equal looseness pervaded the monastic establishments. Hildebert, 
Bishop of Le Mans, made numerous fruitless attempts to restore 
discipline in the celebrated abbey of Euron, the monks of which 
indulged in the grossest licentiousness, and successfully defied his 
power until he was obliged to appeal to the papal legate for assist- 
ance. 2 Albero of Verdun, after fruitless attempts to reform the 
monastery of St. Paul, in his episcopal city, was obliged to turn out 
the monks by force and replace them with Premonstratensians, who 
were then in the full ardor of their new discipline. 3 The description 
which Ivo of Chartres gives of the convent of St. Fara shows a pro- 
miscuous and shameless prostitution, on the part of the nuns of that 
institution, even more degrading. 4 Instances like these could be 
almost indefinitely multiplied, such as that of St. Mary of Argen- 
tueil, reformed by Heloise, the great foundation of St. Denis, previ- 
ous to the abbacy of Suger, and that of St. Gildas de Buys in 
Britanny, as described by Abelard; 5 who, moreover, depicts the 
nuns of the period, in general terms, as abandoned to the most 
hideous licentiousness — those who were good-looking prostituting 



1 Quod ultra modum laxaveris frena 
pudicitise, in tantum ut post acceptum 
archidiaconatum, accubante lateribus 
tuis plebe muliercularum, multani 
genueris plebem puerorum et puella- 
rum. — Ibid. Epist. 277. 

2 Est etiara eis publica et inexpug- 
nabilis cum mulieribus familiaritas, 
quibus illse, promissis et praemissis 
obligatse munusculis, dies iniquitatis 
et noctes infamise vindicare compro- 
bantur. — Hildebert. Cenoman. Epist. 
38 (Lib. II. Epist. 25). 



3 Hist. Episc. Verdunens. (D'Achery 
Spicileg. II. 254). 

4 Audivi turpissimam famam de 
monasterio Sanctse Earae, quod jam 
non locus sanctimonialium sed mulie- 
rum dsemonialium prostibulum dicen- 
dum est, corpora sua ad turpes usus 
omni generi hominum prostituentium. 
— I von. Epist. 70. 

5 Martene Thesaur. T. V. p. 1142-3. 
— Honorii PP. II. Epist. 91.— Guill. 
ISTangis ann. 1123, 1124. 



HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION. 265 

themselves for hire, those who were not so fortunate hiring men to 
gratify their passions, while the older ones, who had passed the age 
of lust, acted as procuresses. 1 Innocent III. may therefore be 
absolved from the charge of exaggeration when, in ordering the 
reform of the nuns of St. Agatha, he alludes to their convent as a 
brothel which infected with its evil reputation the whole country 
around it. 2 A contemporary chronicler records as a matter of special 
wonder that John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, forced his canons 
to live in cloisters according to the Rule of St. Augustin ; and he 
adds that, stimulated by this example, his uncle, John of Lisieux, and 
his successor, Geoffrey of Chartres, attempted the same reform, but 
without success. 3 It is true that some partial reform was effected by 
St. Bernard, but the austerities of the new orders founded by enthu- 
siasts like him and St. Bruno, Robert d'Arbrissel and St. Norbert, 
did not cure the ineradicable vices of the older establishments. 

With such examples before us, it is not difficult to believe the truth 
of the denunciations with which the celebrated Raoul of Poitiers, 
whose fiery zeal gained for him the distinctive appellation of Ardens, 
lashed the vices of his fellows ; nor can we conclude that it was mere 
rhetorical amplification which led him to declare that the clergy, who 
should be models for their flocks, were more shameless and aban- 
doned than those whose lives it was their duty to guide. 4 Peter 
Cantor, indeed, deplores the superiority of the laity to the clergy 
as the greatest injury that afflicted the church. 5 

The natural result of such a state of morals was the prevalence of 
the hereditary principle against which the church had so long and so 
perseveringly striven. How completely this came to be regarded as 
a matter of course, is shown by a contemporary charter to the ancient 
monastery of Beze, by which a priest named Germain, on entering it 
bestowed upon it his holding, consisting of certain specified tithes. 



1 P. Abgelardi Sermo xxix. j sacerdotes quid dicemus qui ceteris 

9 x> ii -o *.-* at ^-^ tt -u •• hominibus non maiores sed deteriores 

cxni.ap.Hahmi sumua? Qui cum J in conspectu homi- 
num gradu sacerdotalis ordinis celsi- 
ores caeteris videamui-j tamen ceteris 
. inferiores vita moribusque jacemus ? 

3 Eoberti de Monte Chron. arm. 1143. j Kadulph. Ardent. T. II. P. ii. Homil. 

A ^ . _ _ 1 25.— See also Homil. 21. 

4 JNonne qui nocentes deberemus | 

absolvere, eis malo exemplo nocemus ? j 5 Nihil enim est quo magis laedatur 



Collect. Monument. Vet. I. 147. As 
to the reformation of the nuns of Laon , 
see G-uill. de Nangis ann. 1128. 



Nonne qui deberemus pollutes lavare, 
vitiorum nostrorum contagione alios 
polluimus? Sed nos, hodie indigni 



Ecclesia quam quod laicos videt esse 
meliores clericis. — Pet. Cant. Verb. 
Abbreviat. cap. lvii. 



266 FRANCE. 

This deed of gift is careful to declare the assent of the sons of the 
donor, showing that the title of the monastery would not have been 
considered good as against the claims of Germain's descendants had 
they not joined in the conveyance. 1 Even as late as 1202 we find 
Innocent III. endeavoring to put a stop to the hereditary trans- 
mission of benefices in the bishopric of Toul, where it was practised 
to an extent which showed how little impression had as yet been 
made by the unceasing efforts of the last hundred and fifty years. 2 

When in the presence of so stiff-necked and evil disposed a genera- 
tion, all human efforts seemed unavailing to secure respect for the 
canons of councils and decretals of popes, we need scarcely wonder if 
recourse was had to the miraculous agencies which so often proved 
efficacious in subduing the minds of men. Wondrous stories, accord- 
ingly, were not wanting, to show how offended Heaven sometimes 
gave in this world a foretaste of the wrath to come, awaiting those 
who lived in habitual disregard of the teachings of the church. Thus 
Peter the Venerable relates with much unction how a priest, who 
had abandoned himself to carnal indulgences, died amid the horrors 
of anticipated hell-fire. Visible to him alone, the demons chuckling 
around his death-bed heated the frying-pan of burning fat in which 
he was incontinently to be plunged, while a drop flying from the 
sputtering mass seared him to the bone, as a dreadful material sign 
that his agony was not the distempered imagining of a tortured 
conscience. A miracle equally significant wrung a confession of his 
weakness from the Dean of Minden in 1167. 3 

If Heaven thus miraculously manifested its anger, it was equally 
ready to welcome back the repentant sinner. In the first energy of 
the reforms of St. Bernard, a priest entered the abbey of Clairvaux. 
The rigor of the Cistercian discipline wore out his enthusiasm ; he 
fled from the convent, returned to his parish, and, according to the 
general custom, (" sicut multis consuetudinis est") took to himself a 
concubine, and soon saw a family increasing around him. The holy 
St. Bernard chanced to pass that way and accepted the priest's warm 
hospitality without recognizing him. When the Saint was ready to 
depart in the morning he found that his host was absent performing 



1 Hoc totum factum est rogatu Ger- 
mani presbyteri, filiorumque ejus, qui 
post inde noster eifectus est mona- 
chus. — Chron. Besuens. Chart, de 
tenement. German, presbyt. 



3 Petri Venerab. de Mirac. Lib. I. 
25. — Chron. Episc. Mindens. c. 26. 



CALIXTUS II. 



267 



his functions in the church, and, turning to one of the children, he 
sent him with a message to his father. Though the child had been 
a deaf-mute from birth, he promptly performed the errand. Roused 
by the miracle to a sense of his iniquity, the apostate rushed to the 
Saint, threw himself at his feet, confessed who he was, and entreated 
to be taken back to the monastery. St. Bernard touched by his 
repentance, promised to call for him on his return. To this the 
priest objected, on the ground that he might die during the interval, 
but was comforted with the assurance that if he died in such a frame 
of mind, he would be received by God as a monk. When St. Bernard 
returned, the repentant sinner was dead. Inquiring as to the cere- 
monies of his interment, he was told that the corpse had been buried 
in its priestly garments; whereupon he ordered the grave to be 
opened, and it was found arrayed, not in its funeral robes, but in full 
Cistercian habit and tonsure, showing that God had fulfilled the 
promises made in his name. 1 

Such was the condition of the Gallican church when, in 1119, 
Calixtus II. stepped from the archiepiscopal see of Vienne to the 
chair of St. Peter. His first great object was to end the quarrel 
with the empire on the subject of investitures, the vicissitudes of 
which rendered the papacy at the time of his accession an exile from 
Italy ; his second was to carry out the reforms so long and so fruit- 
lessly urged by his predecessors. To accomplish both these results 
he lost no time in summoning a great council to assemble at Rheims, 
and when it met in November, 1119, no less than fifteen archbishops, 
more than two hundred bishops, and numerous abbots responded to 
the call, representing Italy, France, Aquitaine, Spain, Germany, and 
England. The attempted reconciliation with the Emperor Henry V. 
failed, but the vices and corruptions of the church were vigorously 
attacked and sternly prohibited for the future. All commerce with 
concubines or wives was positively forbidden under pain of depriva- 
tion of benefice and function. No choice was granted the offender, 
for continuance in his sin after expulsion was punishable with excom- 
munication ; and the hereditary transmission of ecclesiastical dignities 
and property was strictly prohibited. 2 Whether it was the lofty 



1 S. Bernardi Vitae Primae Lib. vn. 
cap. xxi. 

2 Concil. Kemens. arm. 1119 can. 
4, 5. — " Nullus episcopus, nullus pres- 
byter, nullus omnino de clero ecclesi- 



asticas dignitates vel beneficia cuilibet, 
quasi hereditario jure, derelinquat." 
Calixtus had already caused this pro- 
vision to be adopted by the council of 
Toulouse, held in the previous June 
(Concil. Tolosan. ann. J 119 can. 8). 



268 



FRANCE. 



character of the new pope, his royal blood and French extraction, or 
whether the solemnity of the occasion impressed men's minds, it is 
not easy now to guess, but unquestionably these proceedings pro- 
duced greater effect upon the Transalpine churches than any previous 
efforts of the Holy See. Calixtus was long regarded as the real 
author of sacerdotal celibacy in France, and his memory has been 
embalmed in the jingling verses which express the dissatisfaction and 
spite of the clergy, deprived of their ancestral privileges. 



O bone Calliste, nunc clems odit te ; 

Olim presbyteri poterant uxoribus uti ; 

Hoc detruxisti quando tu papa fuisti 5 

Ergo tuum festum nunquam celebratur honestuni. 1 

Calixtus was not a man to rest half way, nor was he content with 
an empty promise of obedience. Under the pressure of his influence, 
the French prelates found themselves obliged to take measures for 
the vigorous enforcement of the canons. What those measures were, 
and the disposition with which they were received, may be under- 
stood from the resultant proceedings in Normandy. Geoffrey, 
Archbishop of Rouen, on leaving the council of Rheims, promptly 
called a synod, which assembled ere the month was out. The canon 
prohibiting female intercourse roused abhorrence and resistance 
among his clergy, and they inveighed loudly against the innovation. 
Geoffrey singled out one who rendered himself particularly prominent 
in the tumult, and caused him to be seized and cast into prison ; 
then, leaving the church, he called in his guards, whom, with acute 
anticipation of trouble, he had posted in readiness. The rude 
soldiery fell upon the unarmed priests, some of whom promptly 
escaped ; the rest, grasping what weapons they could find, made a 
gallant resistance, and succeeded in beating back the assailants. A 
mob speedily collected, which took sides with the archbishop. Assisted 
by this unexpected reinforcement, the guards again forced their way 
into the church, where they beat and maltreated the unfortunate 
clerks to their heart's content; when, as the chronicler quaintly 
observes, the synod broke up in confusion, and the members fled 
without awaiting the archiepiscopal benediction. 2 



1 Cujas quotes these verses as still 
current in his day, and • attributes to 
the efforts of Calixtus the suppres- 



sion of sacerdotal marriage in France. 
(G-iannone, Apologia, c. xiv.) 

2 Orderic. Vital. P. in. Lib. xii. 
c. 13. 



EFFECTS OF THE REFOKM ATION. 



269 



The immediate effect of the reformation thus inaugurated may 
perhaps be judged with sufficient accuracy by the story of Abelard 
and Heloise, which occurred about this period. That Abelard was a 
canon when that immortal love arose, was not, in such a state of 
morals, any impediment to the gratification of his passion, nor did it 
diminish the satisfaction of the canon Fulbert at the marriage of his 
niece, for such marriages, as yet, were valid by ecclesiastical law. 
In her marvellous self-abnegation, however, Heloise recognized that 
while the fact of his openly keeping a mistress, and acknowledging 
Astrolabius as his illegitimate son, would be no bar to his preferment, 
and would leave open to him a career equal to the wildest dreams of 
his ambition, yet to admit that he had sanctified their love by 
marriage, and had repaired, as far as possible, the wrong which he 
had committed, would ruin his prospects forever. In a worldly point 
of view it was better for him, as a churchman, to have the reputation 
of shameless immorality than that of a loving and pious husband ; 
and this was so evidently a matter of course that she willingly sacri- 
ficed everything, and practised every deceit, that he might be con- 
sidered a reckless libertine, who had refused her the only reparation 
in his power. Such was the standard of morals created by the 
church, and such were the conclusions inevitably drawn from them. 

Nor were these conclusions erroneous, if we may judge by an 
incident of the period. An archdeacon of Angouleme had com- 
mitted the unpardonable crime of seducing the abbess of a convent 
in the district under his charge. When the results of the amour 
could be no longer concealed, and the Count of Angouleme ventured 
to remonstrate with Gerard, the bishop of the diocese, that worthy 
prelate protected the offender by dismissing the charge with a filthy 
jest. Yet so far was Gerard from forfeiting the respect of his con- 
temporaries by this laxity, that he was soon afterwards appointed 
papal legate. 1 Somewhat similar is the conclusion to be drawn from 
an occurrence about the same time in the diocese of Comminges, 
where a deacon was entangled in a guilty connection and was sum- 
moned with his paramour before the bishop, St. Bertrand. The 
reproof of the holy man reduced the deacon to contrition, but the 
woman was defiant. He escaped punishment, while she was seized 
by demons and expired on the spot. 2 



1 Arnulf. Lexoviens. de Scliismate 
cap. i. ii. (D'Achery I. 153). 



2 Vit. S. Bertrandi Convenar. No. 
13, 14 (Martene Ampliss. Collect. VI. 

1028). 



270 



FRANCE 



Yet there are evidences that the efforts of Calixtus, and of the 
fathers whose assembled authority was concentrated at Rheims, did 
not by any means eradicate a custom which had now become 
traditional. Soon afterwards King Louis-le-Gros, in granting a 
charter to the church of St. Cornelius at Compiegne, felt it necessary 
to accompany the privileges bestowed with a restriction, worded as 
though it were a novelty, to the effect that those in holy orders con- 
nected with the foundation should have no wives — a condition which 
shows how little confidence existed in the mind of the sagacious 
prince as to the efficacy of the canons so portentiously promulgated 
by the rulers, and so energetically resisted by the ruled. 1 That he 
was justified in this lack of confidence is evident when we see, 
further on in the century, an epistle of Alexander III., undated, 
but probably written about 1170, complaining of the canons of St. 
Ursmar and Antoin who openly kept concubines in their houses, 
while some of them did not hesitate to marry ; 2 while as late as 
1212 a council of Paris was obliged to adopt canons forbidding clerks 
married in the lower orders to hold parishes while retaining their 
wives, and suspending from benefice and functions all those who 
marry while in holy orders. 3 



1 Ut clerici ejusdem ecclesise sicut 
usque modo vixerunt permaneant ; hoc 
tamen praecipimus ut presbyteri, dia- 
coni, subdiaconi nullatenus deinceps 
uxores concubinas habeant ; cseteri 
vero cujuscumque ordinis clerici prop- 
ter fornicationem, licentiam habeant 



ducendi uxores. — Du Cange, s. v. 
Concubina. 

2 Epist. Alex. PP. III. in Martene 
Ampliss. Collect. II. 794. 

3 Concil. Paris, ann. 1212 can. xvi., 
xviii. (Ibid. VII. 99). 



XVII. 
NORMAN ENGLAND. 



We have already seen what was the condition of the Anglo-Saxon 
church when William the Manzer overran the island with his horde 
of adventurers. Making all due allowance for the fact that our 
authorities are mostly of the class whose inclination would lead them 
to misrepresent the conquered and to exaggerate the improvement 
attributable to the conquest, it cannot be doubted that the standard 
of morality was extremely low, and that the clergy were scarcely 
distinguishable from the laity in purity of life or devotion to their 
sacred calling. 

If the reformatory efforts of the popes had not penetrated into the 
kingdom of Edward the Confessor, it was hardly to be expected that 
they would excite attention amid the turmoil attendant upon the 
settlement of the new order of political affairs and the division of 
the spoils among the conquerors. Accordingly, even the vigilance 
of Gregory VII. appears to have virtually overlooked the distant 
land of Britain, conscious, no doubt, that his efforts would be vain, 
even though the influence of Rome had been freely thrown upon the 
side of the Norman invader, and had been of no little assistance to 
him in his preparations for the desperate enterprise. In fact, though 
William saw fit to aid in the suppression of matrimony among the 
priests of his hereditary dominions, and had thereby earned the 
grateful praises of Gregory himself, 1 he does not seem to have 
regarded the morals of his new subjects as worthy of any special 
attention. It is true that in his system of transferring all power 
from the subject to the dominant race, when Saxon bishops were to 
be ejected and their places filled with his own creatures, it was neces- 
sary for him to effect his purpose in a canonical way, and to procure 



1 Gregor. VII. Kegist. Lib. ix. Epist. 5. 



272 



NORMAN ENGLAND. 



the degradation of his victims by the church itself, as it was impos- 
sible for him to lay unhallowed hands upon their consecrated heads, 
or to remove prelates from their sees on questions of mere political 
expediency. To accomplish this, the scandals and irregularities of 
their lives afforded the promptest and most effective excuse, and it 
was freely used. The vigor with which these changes were carried 
into effect is visible in the synods of Winchester and Windsor in 
1070, where numerous bishops and abbots were deprived on various 
pleas ; and the character of the prelates removed may be assumed 
from the description of the Bishop of Litchfield (Chester) by Lan- 
franc, in a letter of the same year to Alexander II., where his public 
maintenance of wife and children is alleged, in addition to other 
crimes of which he was accused. 1 Though a puritan, like Lanfranc, 
bred in the asceticism of the Abbey of Bee, might seek to enforce 
the canons in an individual case, as when he orders Arfastus, Bishop 
of Thetford, to degrade a deacon who refused to part with his wife, 2 
yet that no general effort was made to effect a reform in the ranks of 
the clergy is evident from an epistle addressed in 1071 to William 
by Alexander II., in which, while praising his zeal in suppressing 
the heresy of simony, and exhorting him to fresh exertion in the 
good work, no mention whatever is made of the kindred error of 
Nicolitism, which is usually inseparable in the papal diatribes of the 
period. 3 Equally conclusive is the fact that when, in 1075, Lantranc 
held a national council in London for the purpose of reforming the 
English church, canons were passed to restrain simony, to prevent 
incestuous marriages, and to effect other needful changes, but noth- 
ing was said respecting sacerdotal marriage, at that time the princi- 
pal object of Gregory's vigorous measures. 4 

How thoroughly, indeed, clerical marriage and the hereditary 
descent of benefices was received as legitimate by common consent 
is manifested by a case quoted by Camden from the MS. records of 
the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul of Shrewsbury. Under the 
Conqueror, Roger de Montgomery in founding that house bestowed 
upon it the church of St. Gregory, subject to the life estate of the 
canons then holding it, whose prebends as they died should fall within 
the gift of the monks. The children of the canons, however, dis- 



1 Koger of Hoveden. ann. 1070. — 
Baron. Annal. aim. 1070 No. 26. 



Lanfranci Epist. xxi. 



3 Alesand. II. Epist. 83. 

4 Wilkins Concil. Mag. Britan. I. 



363. 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT REFORMATION. 



273 



puted the gift, claimed that they had a right to their fathers' hold- 
ings, and actually gave rise to a great lawsuit to defend their 
position. 1 



The first steps to check the irregularities of the priesthood appear 
to have been taken in 1076, at the council of Winchester, and the 
extreme tenderness there displayed by Lanfranc for the weakness of 
his flock shows how necessary was the utmost caution in treating a 
question evidently new, and one which deprived the English clergy 
of a privilege to which no taint of guilt had previously been attached. 
We have seen by the instance related above that when Lanfranc 
could act according to his own convictions, he was inclined to enforce 
the absolute rule of celibacy, and we may therefore conclude that on 
this occasion he was overruled by the convictions of his brother pre- 
lates that it was impossible to obtain obedience. All that the council 
would venture upon was a general declaration against the wives of 
men in orders, and it permitted parish priests to retain their con- 
sorts, contenting itself with forbidding future marriages, and enjoin- 
ing on the bishops that they should thereafter ordain no one in the 
diaconate or priesthood without a pledge not to marry in future. 2 

Such legislation could only be irritating and inconclusive. It 
abandoned the principle for which Rome had been contending, and 
thus its spirit of worldly temporizing deprived it of all respect and 
influence. Obedience to it could be therefore invoked on no higher 
ground than that of an arbitrary and unjustifiable command, and 
accordingly it received so small a share of attention that when, some 
twenty-six years later, the holy Anselm, at the great council of Lon- 
don in 1102, endeavored to enforce the reform, the restrictions which 
he ordered were exclaimed against as unheard of novelties, which, 
being impossible to human nature, could only result in indiscriminate 



1 Camden's Britannia, Tit. Shropp- 
shire. 

2 Decretumque est ut nullus canoni- 
cus uxorem habeat. Sacerdotes vero 
in castellis vel in vicis habitantes, 
habentes uxores non cogantur ut di- 
mittant ; non habentes interdicantur 
ut habeant ; et deinceps caventur epis- 
copi ut sacerdotes vel diaconos non 
prsesumant ordinare, nisi prius pro- 



fiteantur ut uxores non habeant. — 
Wilkins I. 367. 

Polydor Virgil describes a council 
of London held by Lanfranc in 1078, 
in which — "Ante omnia mores sacer- 
dotum parum puri quamproxime po- 
tuit, ad priscorum patrum regulam 
revocati sunt, estque illis in posterum 
tempus recte vivendi modus praescrip- 
tus" (Angl. Hist. Lib. ix.) ; but he has 
evidently mixed together the proceed- 
ings of various synods. 



274 NORMAN ENGLAND. 

vice, bringing disgrace upon the church. 1 The tenor of the canons 
of this council, indeed, proves that the previous injunctions had been 
utterly disregarded. At the same time they manifest a much stronger 
determination to eradicate the evil, though they are still far more 
lenient than the contemporary Continental legislation. No arch- 
deacon, priest, or deacon could marry, nor, if married, could retain 
his wife. If a subdeacon, after professing chastity, married, he was 
to be subjected to the same regulation. No priest, as long as he was 
involved in such unholy union, could celebrate mass ; if he ventured 
to do so, no one was to listen to him ; and he was, moreover, to be 
deprived of all legal privileges. A profession of chastity was to be 
exacted at ordination to the subcliaeonate and to the higher grades ; 
and, finally, the children of priests were forbidden to inherit their 
father's churches. 2 

One symptom of weakness is observable in all this. The council 
apparently did not venture to prescribe any ecclesiastical punishment 
for the infraction of the rules thus laid down. If this arose from 
timidity, St. Anselm did not share it, for, when he proceeded to put 
the canons in practice, we find him threatening his contumacious 
ecclesiastics with deprivation for persistence in their irregularities. 
A letter of instruction from him to William, Archdeacon of Canter- 
bury, shows the earnestness with which he entered upon the reform, 
and also affords an instructive insight into the difficulties of the 
enterprise, and the misery which the forcible sundering of family 
ties caused among those who had never doubted the legality and 
propriety of their marriages. Some ecclesiastics of rank sent their 
discarded wives to manors at a distance from their dwellings, and 
these St. Anselm directs shall not be molested if they will promise 
to hold no intercourse except in the presence of legitimate witnesses. 
Some priests were afraid to proceed to extremities with their wives, 
and for these weak brethren grace is accorded until the approaching 
Lent, provided they do not attempt meanwhile to perform their 
sacred functions, and can find substitutes of undoubted chastity to 
minister in their places. The kindred of the unfortunate women 
apparently endeavored to avert the blow by furious menaces against 

1 Hemic. Huntingdon. Lib. vn. — I with complacency the stigma attached 
Matt. Paris ami. 1102. — Henry of to his birth by the new order of things. 



Huntingdon, though an archdeacon, 
was himself the son of a priest, and 
therefore was not disposed to regard 



2 Concil. Londin. ann. 1102.— Wil- 
kins. I. 382 (Eadmer. Hist. Novor. 
Lib. in. ann. 1102). 



ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY 



275 



those who should render obedience, and these instigators of evil are 
to be restrained by threats of excommunication. 1 Another letter to 
the Bishop of Hereford, who had applied for instructions on the 
subject, directs him to replace recalcitrant priests with monks and 
to stir up the laity to drive from the land the obstinate parsons and 
their wives. 2 In the enforcement of these reforms he seemed to 
meet with questions for which he was not prepared, for about this 
time we find him seeking instructions from Paschal II. on several 
knotty points : whether a priest living with his wife can be allowed 
to administer the viaticum at the death-bed in the absence of one 
professing continence ; and what is to be done with him if he refuses 
his ministration on the ground that he is not allowed to celebrate 
mass. Paschal replies, sensibly enough, that it is better to have the 
ministrations of an unchaste priest than to die unhouselled, and that 
a priest refusing his offices under such circumstances is to be pun- 
ished as a homicide of souls. This abandoned the Hildebrandine 
theory and practice, and Anselm was more consistent when he 
assumed that a layman could perform baptism in preference to an 
unchaste priest. 3 

Notwithstanding these zealous efforts of the primate, and the 
countenance of Henry Beauclerc, in whose presence the council had 
been held, Eadmer is forced sorrowfully to admit that its canons 
received but scant respect. Many of the priests adopted a kind of 
passive resistance, and, locking up their churches, suspended the 
performance of all sacred rites. 4 Even in Anselm's own diocese, 
ecclesiastics were found who obstinately refused either to part with 
their wives or to pretermit their functions, and who, when duly 
excommunicated, laughed at the sentence, and continued to pollute 
the church with their unhallowed ministrv. 5 Soon after this Anselm 



1 Anselmi Lib. in. Epist. 62. 

2 D'Achery Spicileg. III. 434. 

3 Paschalis PP. II. Epist. lxxiv.— 
Anselmi Lib. iv. Epist. 41. 

* Simeon Dunelmens. ap. Pagi IV. 
348. 

5 See the confirmation of excom- 
munication in which St. Anselm ex- 
haled his fiery indignation at those 
who continued with "bestiali insania" 
to defy the authorities of the church. 
(Anselmi Lib. in. Epist. 112.) 

Anselm was not entirely without 
assistance in his efforts. One of his 



monks, Reginald, of the great monas- 
tery of Canterbury, wrote a fearfully 
diffuse paraphrase, in Leonine verse, 
of the life of St. Malchus. It was an 
evil-minded generation, indeed, that 
could resist such a denunciation of mar- 
riage as that pronounced by the saint — 

Plenum sorde thorum subeam plenumque 

doloruin ? 
Plenus, ait, tenebris thalamus sordet mu- 

liebris. 
Displicet amplexus, horror mihi copula, 

sexus. 
Conjugium rile, vilescit sponsa, cubile. 
Nolo thorum talem, desidero spiritualem. 
(Croke's Rhyming Latin Verse, p. 67.) 



276 NORMAN ENGLAND. 

fell into disfavor with the king and was exiled. His absence prom- 
ised immunity, and the clergy were not slow to avail themselves of 
it. In 1104 one of his friends, in writing to him, bewails the utter 
demoralization of the kingdom, of which the worst manifestation was 
that priests still continued to marry ; and two years later another 
letter informs him that those who had apparently reformed their evil 
ways were all returning to their previous life of iniquity. Finally, 
Henry I. resolved to turn to account this clerical backsliding, as a 
financial expedient to recruit his exhausted treasury. All who were 
suspected of disobedience to the canons of the council of London 
were seized and tried, and the property of those who could be proved 
guilty was confiscated. By this time Anselm had been reconciled 
to the king, and he promptly interfered to check so gross a violation 
of ecclesiastical immunity. His remonstrances were met by Henry 
with well-feigned surprise, and finally the matter was compromised 
by discharging those who had not been fined, while those who had 
been forced to pay were promised three years' undisturbed possession 
of their positions. 1 

That it was impossible to effect suddenly so great a change in the 
habits and lives of the Anglican clergy was, indeed, admitted by 
Paschal II. himself, when, in 1107, he wrote to Anselm concerning 
the questions connected with the children of priests. While remind- 
ing him of the rules of the church, he adds that as, in England, the 
larger and better portion of the clergy fall within the scope of the 
prohibition, he grants to the primate power of dispensation, by 
which, in view of the sad necessity of the times, he can admit to the 
sacred offices those born during their parents' priesthood, who are 
fitted for it by their education and purity of life. A second epistle 
on the same subject attests the perplexity of the pope, recalling to 
Anselm's recollection his former injunctions, and recommending that, 
as there was no personal guilt involved, those of the proscribed class 
who were in orders should, if worthy of their positions, be allowed 
to retain them, without the privilege of advancement. 2 The ques- 
tion, indeed, was hotly debated. There is extant a letter written 
about this time by Thibaut of Etampes, a dignitary of Oxford, to a 
certain Rosceline, who with more zeal than discretion had promul- 
gated the doctrine that the sons of priests were canonically ineligible 

1 Eadmer. Hist. Novor. Lib. iv. — Anselnii Lib. in. Epist. 109. 

2 Wilkins, I. 378-80.— Paschalis II. Epist. 221. 



HENRY I. UNDERTAKES A REFORMATION. 277 

to ordination. Thibaut characterizes this as not only an innovation, 
but a blasphemy, and seems utterly unconscious that there was any 
authority for such a rule. 1 

It may be remarked that thus far the proceedings of the reformers 
were directed solely against the marriage of ecclesiastics. It may 
possibly be that this arose from general conjugal virtue, and that, 
satisfied with the privilege, no other disorders prevailed among the 
clergy ; but it is more probable that the heresy of marriage was so 
heinous in the eyes of the sacerdotalists, that it rendered all other 
sins venial, and that such other sins might be tacitly passed over in 
the endeavor to put an end to the greater enormity. Be this as it 
may, the stubborn wilfulness of the offenders only provoked increas- 
ing rigor on the part of the authorities. We have seen that the 
council of 1102 produced little result, and that when the secular 
power interfered to enforce its canons, the church, jealous of its 
privileges, protested, so that many priests retained their wives, and 
marriage was still openly practised. King Henry, therefore, at 
length, in 1108, summoned another council to assemble in London, 
where he urged the bishops to prosecute the good work, and pledged 
his power to their support. 2 Fortified by this and by the consent of 
the barons, they promulgated a series of ten canons, whose stringent 
nature and liberal denunciation of penalties prove that the prelates 
felt themselves strengthened by the royal co-operation and thus able 
to compel obedience. The Nicene canon was declared the unalterable 
law of the church ; those ecclesiastics who had disregarded the decrees 
of the previous council were debarred from performing their functions 
if longer contumacious ; any priest requiring to see his wife was only 
to do so in the open air and in the presence of two legitimate wit- 
nesses ; accusations of guilt were to be met by regular canonical 
purgation, a priest requiring six compurgators, a deacon four, and a 
subdeacon two, each of his own order. Disobedience to these canons 
was declared punishable with deprivation of function and benefice, 
expulsion from the church, and infamy. Only eight days of grace 
were allowed ; further persistence in wrong-doing being visited with 
instant excommunication, and confiscation to the bishops of the pri- 
vate property of the transgressors and of their women, together with 

1 D'Achery Spicileg. III. 448. 

2 Eadmeri Hist. Novor. Lib. iv. 



278 NORMAN ENGLAND. 

the persons of the latter. A very significant clause, moreover, shows 
that grasping officials had discovered the speculative value of previ- 
ous injunctions, and that the degrading custom of selling indulgence 
was already in common use, for the council required of all arch- 
deacons and deans, under penalty of forfeiture, an oath that they 
would not receive money for conniving at infractions of the rule, 
nor permit priests who kept women to celebrate mass or to employ 
vicars to officiate for them. 1 

From the account of the historian, we may assume these to be 
rather acts of parliament than canons of a council, and that the 
assembly was convened for the special purpose of devising measures 
for subduing the recalcitrant clergy. The temporal power was thus 
pledged to enforce the regulations, and as so enterprising and reso- 
lute a monarch as Henry had undertaken the reform, there can be 
little doubt that he prosecuted it with vigor. Anselm died in 1109, 
and the clergy rejoiced in the hope that their persecution would cease 
with the removal of their persecutor, but the king proceeded to en- 
force the regulations of the council of London with more vigor than 
ever, and soon obtained at least an outward show of obedience. 
Eadmer darkly intimates that this resulted in a great increase of 
shocking crimes committed with those relatives whose residence was 
allowed, and he is at some pains to argue that Anselm and his 
attempted reforms were not responsible for an effect so little contem- 
plated in their well-meant endeavors. Finally, the ardor of the 
king cooled off; ecclesiastical officials were found readily accessible 
to bribes for permitting female intercourse, and those who had grown 
tired of the wives from whom they had been separated found no 
difficulty in forming more desirable unions with new ones. Eadmer 
sorrowfully adds that by this time there were few indeed who con- 
tinued to preserve the purity with which Anselm had labored so 
strenuously to adorn his clergy. 2 

The evil influences of this laxity in the Anglican church were not 
altogether confined to Britain. At that period the Swedish bishoprics 
were frequently filled by Englishmen, and it is quite possible that 
from them was derived the laxity which, as we have seen, at a later 
period, caused the Swedes to be regarded as heretics adhering to the 
Greek schism. An incident occurring about this time shows the 

1 Eadmeri Hist. Novor. Lib. iv. 

2 Eadmeri Hist. Novor. Lib. it. 



CAKDINAL JOHN OF CREMA. 



279 



wisdom of the church in her endeavors to sunder the earthly ties of 
her ministers. An English priest named Edward was promoted to 
the Swedish episcopate of Scaren. Unluckily, he had left a wife 
behind him in England, and, after a short residence in his new dig- 
nity had enabled him to collect together the treasures of his see, he 
absconded with them to his spouse, leaving his diocese widowed and 
penniless. 1 

At length the condition of the church in England attracted the 
attention of the pontiffs who had bestowed so much fruitless energy 
on the morals of the Continental priesthood ; and Honorius II. sent 
Cardinal John of Crema to England, for the purpose of restoring 
its discipline. In September, 1126, the legate held a council in 
London, where he caused the adoption of a canon menacing with 
degradation all those in orders who did not abstain from the society 
of their wives, or of other women liable to suspicion ; 2 and the ex- 
pressions employed show that previous legislation had been altogether 
nugatory. That the cardinal's endeavors excited the opposition of 
at least a powerful portion of the clergy is fairly deducible from the 
unlucky adventure which put a sudden termination to his mission. 
After fiercely denouncing the concubines of priests and expatiating 
on the burning shame that the body of Christ should be made by 
one who had but just left the side of a harlot, he was that very night 
surprised in the company of a courtesan, though he had on the same 
day celebrated mass ; and the suggestion that he had been entrapped 
by his enemies, while it did not palliate his guilt, may be assumed 
to indicate the power and determination of those who opposed his 
reforms. 3 



1 Messenii Chron. Episcoporum per 
Sueciam etc. p. 76 (Stockholmiee, 1611). 

2 Concil. Londiniens. arm. 1126 c. 13 
("Wilkins, I. 408). 

3 Henric. Huntingd. Lib. vn. — 
Matt. Paris ann. 1125. — Baronius 
(ann. 1125, No. 12) endeavors to dis- 
prove the story, but is only able to 
offer general negative allegations, of 
but little weight when opposed to the 
testimony of a contemporary like 
Henry of Huntingdon, who speaks of 
it as a matter of public notoriety, 
which covered the cardinal with dis- 
grace and drove him from England. 

Such conduct was a favorite theme 
of objurgation with the ascetics of the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries — 



Certe tu qui missam dicis 
Post amplexum meretricis, 
Potaberis ab inimicis 
Liquore sulphuris et picis. 

(Du Meril, Poesies Latines, p. 133.) 
So also, among the poems which 
pass under the name of G-olias Epis- 
copus is one of fierce invective di- 
rected against the priests, in which 
this is one of the principal accusa- 
tions — 

sacerdos, heec responde, 

Qui frequenter et jocunde 

Cum uxore dormis, unde 
Mane surgens, missam dicis, 

Corpus Christi benedicis, 

Post amplexus meretricis 

Minus quam tu peccatricis. 



280 



NOKMAN ENGLAND 



The energy of the reformers and the stubborn obstinacy of the 
clergy are alike manifested by the council of Westminster, held the 
following year, which found it necessary to repeat the prohibition 
and to guard it with stringent provisions, based upon those of 1108. 1 
This, however, proved as ineffectual as its predecessors, and another 
effort was made the next year under auspices which promised a hap- 
pier result. King Henry seemed suddenly to recover the holy zeal 
which had lain dormant for a score of years, and in the summer of 
1129 he convened a great assembly of all the bishops, archdeacons, 
abbots, priors, and canons of England, who found that they were 
summoned to meet for the purpose of putting an end to the im- 
morality of the clergy. After long discussion, it was decreed that 
all who should not put away their wives by St. Andrew's day (No- 
vember 30th) should be deprived of their functions, their churches, 
and their houses ; and the assembly separated, intrusting to the 
zealous sovereign the execution of the decree. Perhaps Henry 
remembered how St. Anselm had interfered in 1106 to protect the 
guilty clergy from the royal extortioners ; perhaps the experience of 
his long reign had shown him the fruitlessness of endeavoring to 
impose an impossible virtue on carnal-minded men. His exchequer, 
as usual, was in danger of collapse. The whole transaction may 
have been a deeply-laid scheme to extort money, or the sudden 
promptings of temptation may have been too powerful for his self- 
denial — who now can tell ? We only know that he at once put into 
action an extended system of " cullagium," and having, by the blind 
simplicity of his prelates, the temporalities of nearly all the minor 
clergy in his power, he proceeded to traffic in exemptions shamelessly 
and on the largest scale. As a financial device, the plan was a good 
one ; he realized a vast sum of money, and his afflicted priests were 
at least able to show their superiors a royal license to marry or to 
keep their concubines in peace. 2 



The repetition of almost identical enactments, year after year, 
with corresponding infinitesimal results, grows wearisome and mo- 



Plenus sorde, plenus mendis, 
Ad autorem manus tendis, 
Quern contempnis, quern offendi 
Meretrici dum ascendis. 

#- * * * * 

Quali corde, quali ore 

Corpus Christi, cum cruore, 
Tractas, surgens de foetore, 
Dignus plagis et tortore. 



Mapes's Poems (Camd. Soc. Ed. pp. 
49-50). 

1 Concil. Westmonast. ann. 1127 
c. 5, 6, 7 (Wilkins, I. 410). 

2 Henric. Huntingd. Lib. vn. — : 
Anglo Saxon Chron. ann. 1129. — 
Matt. Paris ann. 1129. 



DISORDERS OF THE CHURCH. 



281 



notorious. If, therefore, I refer to the synod of Westminster, held 
in 1138, by the papal legate Alberic, Bishop of Ostia, which de- 
prived of function and benefice all married and concubinary ecclesi- 
astics, 1 it is only to observe that no notice was taken of the doctrine 
of the invalidity of sacerdotal marriage, which at that period Inno- 
cent II. was engaged in promulgating. So, if I allude to an epistle 
of Lucius II. in 1144, reprehending the general English custom by 
which sons succeeded to the churches of their fathers, it is merely 
to chronicle the commencement of the direct efforts of the popes, 
fruitlessly continued during the remainder of the century, to abolish 
that wide-spread and seemingly ineradicable abuse. 2 

What was the condition of the church resulting from these pro- 
longed and persistent efforts may be guessed from one or two exam- 
ples. When, in 1139, Nigel, Bishop of Ely, revolted against King 
Stephen, he intrusted the defence of his castle of Devizes to his con- 
cubine, Maud of Bamsbury. She bravely fulfilled her charge and 
repulsed the assaults of the king, until he bethought him of a way 
to compel a surrender. Obtaining possession of Boger, son of Maud 
and Nigel, the unhappy youth was brought before the walls, and 
preparations were made to hang him in his mother's sight. At this 
her courage gave way, and she capitulated at once. 3 Though the 
monkish chronicler stigmatizes Maud as "pellex episcopi," she may 
probably have been his wife — in either case the publicity of the con- 
nection is a sufficient commentary on the morals and manners of the 
age which took no exception to the elevation of Bichard Fitz-Neal, 
another son of the same reverend prelate, to the bishopric of London 
and to the post of treasurer to King Henry II. 

If this be attributed to the unbridled turbulence of Stephen's 
reign, we may turn to the comparatively calmer times of Henry II., 
when Alexander III., amid his ceaseless efforts to restore the church 
discipline of England, in 1171, ordered the Bishops of Exeter and 
Worcester and the Abbot of Feversham to examine and report as to 
the evil reputation of Clarembald, abbot-elect of St. Augustine's of 
Canterbury. In the execution of this duty they found that that 
venerable patriarch had seventeen bastards in one village ; purity he 
ridiculed as an impossibility, while even licentiousness had no attrac- 



1 Concil. Westmonast. 
c. 8 (Wilkins, I. 415). 



1138 



Kymer, Fcedera Tom. I. ann. 1144. 



— Post. Concil. Lateran, P. xix. 
passim. — Lib. I. Tit. 17 Extra. 

3 Orderic Vital. P. in. Lib. xiii. 
c. 20. 



282 



NORMAN ENGLAND. 



tion for his exhausted senses unless spiced with the zest of publicity. 1 
That a man whose profligacy was so openly and shamelessly defiant 
could be elected to the highest place in the oldest and most honored 
religious community in England is a fact which lends color to the 
assertion of a writer of the time of King John, that clergy and laity 
were indistinguishably bad, 2 and perhaps justifies the anecdote told 
of Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, who assumed that the clergy were 
much worse than the laity. 3 How little these scandals shocked the 
public is shown by the fact that it required papal interference to 
cause the reformation of the nunnery of Avesbury. The abbess 
had borne three children and the nuns, as the chronicler informs us, 
were worse than their superior, but when Alexander forced an 
investigation no canonical punishment was inflicted on the guilty. 
Such of the nuns as promised to live chastely in future were allowed 
to remain, and the rest were simply dismissed, while the abbess was 
pensioned liberally with ten marks a year to preserve her from dis- 
grace and want. The vacancies thus created were filled with nuns 
from Fontevraud, who proved to be as bad as those whom they 
replaced. 4 The same insensibility is manifested in a legal transac- 
tion of the period, when Witgar, the priest of Mendlesham, desired 
to secure the reversion of his benefice to his son Nicholas, and ap- 
plied to the patron of his church, Martin, Abbot of Battle Abbey, 
who agreed to conform to his wishes on condition that the annual 
payment exacted from the church in question should be increased 



1 Emit semine et hinnit in feminas, 
adeo impudens ut libidinem, nisi quam 
publicaverit, voluptuosam esse non 
reputet. . . . Eornicationis abusum 
comparat necessitati. Proletarius est 
adeo quod paucis annis ei soboles tanta 
succrevit ut patriarcharum seriem ante- 
cedat. — Joann. Saresberiens. Epist. 310. 
"Well might Alexander, in ordering his 
ejection, say "ipsum invenerint tot ex- 
cessibus et crirninibus publicis irretitum, 
quod per eorum nobis litteras recitata 
auribus nostris nimium prsestiterunt 
tsedium et dolorem. 7 ' — Elmham Hist. 
Monast. August, p. 413. 

2 Crescit malorum cumulus, 
Est sacerdos ut populus, 
Currunt ad illicitum, 
Uterque juxta libitum 

Audas et imperterritus. 

(Wright, Polit. Songs of England, p. 9.) 



And another indignant churchman 
exclaims : — 

Qui sunt qui ecclesias vendunt et mercan- 

tur? 
Qui sunt fornicarii? Qui sunt qui moe- 

chantur ? 
Qui naturam transvolant et abominantur? 
Qui ? clerici ; a nobis non longe extra 

petantur. 

Mapes's Poems, pp. 156-7. 

3 A woman applied to Bishop Hugh 
for advice "super impotentia mariti, 
quia debitum ei reddere non poterat," 
when the prelate gravely replied, " Fa- 
ciamus ergo si vis eum sacerdotem, et 
statim illo in opere, reddita sibi facul- 
tate, proculdubio potens efficietur." — 
G-irald. Cambrens. Gemm. Eccles. Dist. 
II. c. xviii. 

4 Benedicti Abbatis Gesta Begis 
Henr. II. T. I. pp. 135-6 ; T. II. p. 

xxx. (M. E. Series.) 



VENALITY OF THE OFFICIALS. 



283 



from ten shillings to forty. Witgar agreed, and on an appointed 
day, accompanied by his son, he met the abbot and his attendants at 
Colchester, where oaths were publicly interchanged and a formal 
agreement was entered into. 1 

The efforts of Alexander and his successors were seconded by fre- 
quent national and local synods, to whose special injunctions it is 
scarcely worth while to refer in full. One noticeable point about 
them, however, is that the term a wife" disappears, and is replaced 
by "concubina" or "focaria" — the latter meaning a person who was 
a permanent occupant of the priest's hearth, but was not recognized 
by the authorities as a lawful wife. Deans and archdeacons were 
enjoined to hunt up these illegal companions, but from the frequency 
of the injunctions, we may safely conclude that the search was not 
often successful, and that the officials found the duty assigned to 
them too difficult or too unprofitable for execution. That it was not 
impossible, however, when earnestly undertaken, is shown by the 
readiness with which King John unearthed the unfortunate creatures 
when it suited his policy to do so. During the long dispute over the 
election of Giraldus Cambrensis to the see of St. David's, the king, 
who was resolved that no Welshman should hold that preferment, 
instructed his officers, in 1202, to seize the women of all the cathedral 
chapter who persisted in supporting Giraldus. 2 The measure was 
doubtless an efficacious one, and he repeated it when, in 1208, he 
persecuted the clergy in his blind impotence of wrath at the interdict 
set upon his kingdom by Innocent III. Discerning in these quasi- 
conjugal relations the tenderest spot in which to strike those who had 
rebelled against his authority by obeying the interdict, and at the 
same time as the surest and readiest means of extorting money, 
among his other schemes of spoliation he caused all these women to 
be seized, and then forced the unfortunate churchmen to buy their 
partners back at exorbitant prices. 3 



1 Chron. Monast. de Bello, London, 
1846, pp. 142-3. 

2 Haddan & Stubbs's Councils of 
Great Britain I. 423-4. 

3 Matt. Paris ann. 1208. 

Perhaps it is to John's experience in 
this matter that may be attributed the 
fact that when, in 1214, he entered into 
a league with his knight-errant nephew, 
the Emperor Otho IV., against Philip 



Augustus, they also declared war against 
Innocent III., and proposed to carry 
out a gigantic scheme of spoliation by 
enriching, from ecclesiastical property, 
all who might rally to their standard. 
They proclaimed their intention of 
humbling the church, reducing the 
numbers of the clergy, stripping those 
who were left of all their temporalities, 
and leaving them only moderate sti- 
pends. Both John and Otho had been 



284 



NOKMAN ENGLAND 



The ease, indeed, with which the eyes of the officials were blinded 
to that which was patent to the public was the subject of constantly 
recurring legislation, the reiteration and increasing violence of which 
bears irrefragable testimony at once to its necessity and its impotence. 
Not only in grave synods and pastorals was the abuse reprehended 
and deplored, but it offered too favorable a subject for popular anim- 
adversion to escape the shafts of satire. In the preceding century, 
Thomas a Becket, in a vehement attack upon simony, includes this 
among the many manifestations of that multiform sin — 

Symon auffert, Symon donat ; 
Hunc expellit, hunc coronat ; 
Hunc circunidat gravi peste, 
Ilium nuptiali veste. 1 

There were few more popular poems in the Middle Ages than the 
"Apocalypsis Golige," the more than doubtful authorship of which, 
at the close of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century, is 
claimed for Walter Mapes in England and Gautier de Chatillon in 
Trance ; and the enduring reputation of which is attested by an 
English version as late as the sixteenth century. The author, who- 
ever he be, inveighing against the evil courses of the archdeacons, 
assumes that the extortion of the "cullagium" was almost universal. 

Seductam nuntii fraude praeambuli 

Capit focariam, ut per cubiculi 

Fortunani habeat fortunam loculi, 

Et per vehiculum omen vehiculi. 
Decano prascipit quod si presbiteri 

Per genitivos scit dativos fieri, 

Accusans faciat vocatum conteri, 

Ablatis fratribus a porta inferi. 2 

Towards the middle of the thirteenth century, Peter de Yinea also 
has his fling at the same corruption, and though the part he took in 
the fierce quarrels between his master Frederic II. and the papacy 



under excommunication, and could 
speak feelingly of the overweening 
power and abuses of the church, whose 
members they characterize as "genus 
hoc pigram et fruges consumere natum, 
quod otia ducit, quodque sub tecto 
marcet et umbra, qui frustra vivunt, 
quorum omnis labor in hoc est, ut 
Baccho Yenerique vacent, quibus cra- 
pula obesis poris colla inflat, ventresque 



abdomine onerat." (Lunig. Cod. Dip- 
lorn. Italise I. 34). A few weeks later 
the Bridge of Bouvines put a sudden 
end to this prosperous plan of reforma- 
tion. 

1 Du Meril, Poesies Pop. Latines, p. 



Mapes 's Poems, p. 10. 



PEESISTENCE IN MAKRIAGE. 



285 



renders him perhaps a prejudiced witness, still his ample experience 
of the disorders of the church makes him an experienced one. 

Non utuntur clerici nostri vestimentis : 

Sed tenent focarias, quod clamor est gentis — 

— Dehinc reum convocant, et, turba rejecta, 

Dicunt : Ista crimina tibi sunt objecta ; 

Pone libras quindecim in nostra collecta, 

Et tua flagitia non erunt detecta. 

Keus dat denarios, Eratres scriptum radunt ; 

Sic infames plurimi per nummos evadunt : 

Qui totam pecuniam quam petunt non tradunt, 

Simul in infamiam et in poenam cadunt. 1 

The example which King John had set, however instructive, was 
not appreciated by the ecclesiastical authorities, and the "focarise " 
were allowed to remain virtually undisturbed, at least to such an 
extent as to render them almost universal. Although by rigid 
churchmen they were regarded as mere concubines, there can be little 
doubt that the tie between them and the priests was of a binding 
nature, which appears to have wanted none of the rites essential to 
its entire respectability. Giraldus Cambrensis, who died at an ad- 
vanced age about the year 1220, speaks of these companions being 
publicly maintained by nearly all the parish priests in England and 
Wales. They arranged to have their benefices transmitted to their 
sons, while their daughters were married to the sons of other priests, 
thus establishing an hereditary sacerdotal caste in which marriage 
appears to have been a matter of course. 2 In 1202 the Bishop of 



1 Du Meril, op. cit. p. 171. 

2 Filius autem, more sacerdotum 
parochialium Anglise fere cunctorum, 
damnabili quidem et detestabili, pub- 
licam secum habebat comitem indi- 
viduam, et in foco focariam et in cubi- 
culo concubinam. — Girald. Cambrens. 
Specul. Eccles. Dist. iii. c. 8. (Girald. 
Opp. III. 129.) However Giraldus and 
the severer churchmen might stigma- 
tize these companions as concubines, 
they were evidently united in the 
bonds of matrimony. He says him- 
self, respecting Wales, " Nosse te novi 
. . . canonicos Menevenses fere cunctos, 
maxime vero Walensicos, publicos for- 
nicarios et concubinarios esse, sub alis 
ecclesiaa cathedralis et tanquam in ipso 
ejusdem gremio focarias suas cum ob- 
stetricibus et nutricibus atque cunabulis 
in laribus et penetralibus exhibentes. 
. . Adeo quidem ut sicut patres eorum 



ipsos ibi genuerunt et promoverunt, sic 
et ipsi more consimili prolem ibidem 
suscitant, tarn in vitiis sibi quam bene- 
ficiis succedaneam. Filiis namque suis 
statim cum adulti fuerint et plene pu- 
bertals annos excesserint, concanoni- 
corum suorum Alias, ut sic firmiori 
foedere sanguinis scilicet et amnitatis 
jure jungantur, quasi maritali copula 
dari procurant. Postmodum autem 
. . . canonicas suas filiis suis conferri 
per cessionem non inefiicaciter elabo- 
rant." (De Jure et Statu Menev. 
Eccles. Dist. i.) That this condition 
of affairs was not confined to the 
canons of cathedral churches is evi- 
dent from his general remarks in the 
Gemm. Eccles. Dist. II. cap. xxiii. 

His treatise De Statu Menevens. 
Eccles. was written after 1215, and 
therefore subsequent to the death of 
Innocent III. 



286 NOKM-AN ENGLAND. 

Exeter complained to Innocent III. of the numerous sons of parish 
priests and vicars who seized their churches and claimed to hold 
them of right, actually appealing to Rome when he sought to interfere 
with them. Innocent of course ordered their removal and subjection 
to discipline without appeal ; but the evil continued, and in 1205 we 
find him writing on the subject to the Bishop of Winchester whom 
he required to eject the sons of priests who in many cases held their 
father's benefices. 1 The propriety of the connection, and the heredi- 
tary ecclesiastical functions of the offspring are quaintly alluded to in 
a poem of the period, wherein a logician takes a priest to task for 
entertaining such a partner — 

L. — Et pr33 tot innumeris qme frequentas malis, 

Est tibi presbytera plus exitialis. 
P. — Malo cum presbytera pulchra fornicari, 

Servituros domino filios lucrari, 

Quam vagas satellites per antra sectari : 

Est inhonestissiinum sic dehonestari. 2 

Even the holy virgins, spouses of Christ, seem to have claimed 
and enjoyed the largest liberty. To this period is attributed a homily 
addressed to nuns, which earnestly dissuades them from leaving their 
blessed state and subjecting themselves to the cares and toils insep- 
arable from matrimony. The writer appeals to no rules of ecclesi- 
astical law that could be enforced to prevent them from following 
their choice, but labors drearily to prove that they would not better 
their condition, either in this world or the next, by forsaking their 
heavenly bridegroom for an earthly one. — " And of godes brude. and 
his freo dohter. for ba to gederes ha is ; bicumeth theow under mon 
and his threl to don al and drehen that him liketh." 3 

Innocent III. had not overlooked such a state of discipline, espe- 
cially after the transactions between himself and John had rendered 
him the suzerain of England, and doubly responsible for the morals 
of the Anglican Church. Thus as early as 1203 we find him ex- 
pressing to the Bishop of Norwich his surprise that priests in his 
diocese contend that they can retain their benefices after having sol- 



1 Innocent. PP. III. Eegest. v. 66 ; vm. 147. 

2 De presbytero et logico. Mapes's Poems, p. 256. 

3 Hali Meidenhad, p. 7. (Early English Text Society, 1866.) 



FRUITLESS LEGISLATION 



287 



emnly contracted marriage in the face of the church. All such are 
peremptorily ordered to be removed without appeal, either by the 
bishop himself, or by his superior in cases in which he had personally 
conferred the preferment. 1 His zealous efforts to effect an impossible 
reform are chronicled by a rhymer of the period, who enters fully 
into the dismay of the good pastors at the prospect of the innova- 
tion, and who argues their cause with all the sturdy common-sense 
of the Anglo-Saxon mind. 

Prisciani regula penitus cassatur, 

Sacerdos per hie et hsec olim declinabatur ; 
Sed per hie solummodo nunc articulatur, 
Cum per nostrum prassulem heec amoveatur. 
****** 

Quid agant presbyteri propriis carentes ? 
Alienas violant clanculo molentes, 
Nullis pro conjugiis fceminis parcentes, 
Pcenam vel infamiam nihil metuentes. 
***** 

Non est Innocentius, immo nocens vere, 
Qui quod Deus docuit studet abolere ; 
Jussit enim Dominus foeminas habere, 
Sed hoc noster pontifex jussit prohibere. 

Gignere nos prsecipit vetus testamentum ; 
Ubi novum prohibet nusquam est inventum. 
A modernis latum est istud documentum, 
Ad quod nullum ratio prsebet argumentum. 2 

Nor were the Anglican bishops remiss in seconding the efforts of 
the pope to break down the opposition which thus openly defied their 
power and ventured even to justify the heresy of sacerdotal marriage. 
Councils were held which passed canons more stringent than ever ; 
bishops issued constitutions and pastorals denouncing the custom ; 
inquests were organized to traverse the dioceses and investigate the 
household of every priest. The women especially were attacked. 
Christian sepulture was denied them ; property left to them and 
their children by their partners in guilt was confiscated to the 
bishops ; churching after childbirth was interdicted to them ; and, if 



1 Innocent. PP. III. Kegest. vi. 103. 

2 Mapes's Poems, pp. 171-2. This 
well-known poem has been attributed 
to the Venerable Hildebert, Bishop of 
Le Mans, as written on the occasion of 



the reformation of the French clergy 
by Calixtus II. (Croke, Khyming Latin 
Verse, p. 85), but the character of that 
reverend prelate forbids such an as- 
sumption, even if the allusion to Inno- 
cent did not assign to it a later period. 



288 



NORMAN ENGLAND 



still contumacious after a due series of warnings, they were to be 
handed over to the secular arm for condign punishment. 1 How much 
all this bustling legislation effected is best shown by the declaration 
of the legate, Cardinal Otto, in 1237, at the great council of London. 
He deplores the fact that married men received orders and held 
benefices while still retaining their wives, and did not hesitate to 
acknowledge their children as legitimate by public deeds and witnesses. 
After descanting upon the evils of this neglect of discipline, he orders 
that all married clerks shall be deprived of preferment and benefice, 
that their property shall not descend to wife or children, but to their 
churches, and that their sons shall be incapable of holy orders unless 
specially dispensed for eminent merit ; then turning upon concubinary 
priests, he inveighs strongly against their licentiousness, and decrees 
that all guilty of the sin shall within thirty days dismiss their women 
forever, under pain of suspension from function and benefice until 
full satisfaction, persistent contumacy being visited with deprivation. 
The archbishops and bishops are commanded to make thorough 
inquisition throughout all the deaneries, to bring offenders to light, 
and also to put an end to the iniquitous practice of ordaining the 
offspring of such connections as successors in their father's benefices. 2 

This legislation produced much excitement, and the legate even 
had fears for his life. Some prelates, indeed, maintained that it 
only was binding on the church of England during the residence of 
Otto, but they were overruled, and it remained at least nominally in 
force and was frequently referred to subsequently as the recognized 
law in such matters. Its effect was considerable, and some of the 
bishops endeavored to carry out its provisions with energy, as may be 
presumed from a constitution of William of Cantilupe, Bishop of 
Worcester, issued in 1240, ordering his officials to investigate dili- 
gently whether any of the clergy of the diocese had concubines or 
were married. 3 

To this period and to the disturbance caused by these proceedings are 
doubtless to be attributed several satirical pieces of verse describing 
the excitement occurring among the unfortunate clerks thus attacked 



1 Concil. Eboracens. ann. 1195 c. 
17. — Concil. Londiniens. ann. 1200 c. 
10. — Concil. Dunelmens. ann. 1220. — 
Concil. Oxoniens. ann. 1222 c. 28. — 
Constit. Archiep. Cantuar. ann. 1225 
(Matt. Paris ann. 1225). — Constit. 
Episc. Lincoln, ann. 1230 (Wilkins, I. 



627). — Constit. Provin. Cantuar. ann. 
1236 c. 3, 4, 30.— Constit. Coventriens. 
ann. 1237 (Wilkins, I. 641), &c. 

2 Matt. Paris ann. 1237. 

3 Wilkins, I. 672-3. 



EXCITEMENT AMONG THE CLERGY. 289 

in their tenderest spot. The opening lines of one of these poems 
indicate the novelty and unexpectedness of the new regulations : — 

Humor novus Angliae partes pergiravit, 
Clericos, presbyteros omnes excitavit, 
* * * * * •* 

Nascitur presbyteris hinc fera procella : 
Quisquis timet graviter pro sua puella. 

The author then describes a great council, attended by more than ten 
thousand ecclesiastics, assembled to deliberate on the course to be 
pursued in so delicate a conjuncture. An old priest commences — 

Pro nostris uxoribus sumus congregati ; 
Videatis provide quod sitis parati, 
Ad mandatum domini papae vel legati, 
Eespondere graviter ne sitis dampnati. 1 

Another poem of similar character describes a chapter held by all 
orders and grades to consider the same question. The various speakers 
declare their inability to obey the new rule, except two, whose age 
renders them indifferent. A learned doctor exclaims — 

Omnis debet clericus habere concubinam ; 
Hoc dixit qui coronam gerit auro trinam : 
Hanc igitur retinere decet disciplinam. 

The general belief in the legality of the connection is shown by the 
remark of another — 

Surgens unus presbyter turba de totali . . . 
"Unam" dixit "teneo amore legali, 
Quam nolo dimittere pro lege tali." 

Another expects to escape by paying his a cullagium" — 

Duodecimus clamat magno cum clamore : 
" Non me pontifex terret minis et pavore : 
Sed ego nummos praebeam pro Dei amore, 
Ut in pace maneam cara cum uxore." 

Another urges the indiscriminate immorality attending upon the 
attempt to enforce an impossible asceticism — 

Addidit ulterius : " Sitis memor horum, 
Si vetare prsesul vult specialem torum, 
Cernet totum brevi plenum esse chorum 
Ordine sacrorum adulterorum." 



1 De Convocatione Sacerdotum (Mapes's Poems, pp. 180-2). 
19 



290 



NORMAN ENGLAND. 



And at length the discussion closes with the speech of a Dominican, 
who ends his remarks by predicting — 

Habebimus clerici duas concubinas : 
Monachi, canonici totidem vel trinas : 
Decani, prselati, quatuor vel quinas : 
Sic tandem leges implebimus divinas. 1 

Notwithstanding these flights of the imagination, no organized 
resistance was offered to the reform. The clergy sullenly acquiesced, 
and submitted to a pressure which was becoming irresistible. The 
triumph of the sacerdotal party, however, was gradual, and no exact 
limit can be assigned to the recognition of the principle of celibacy. 
In 1250 the idea of married priests was still sufficiently prevalent to 
lead the populace of London to include matrimony among the accu- 
sations brought against Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, when 
his tyranny had aroused general resistance; 2 and in 1255 Walter 
Kirkham, Bishop of Durham, still felt it necessary to prohibit the 



1 Mapes's Poems, pp. 176-9. — All the 
poetasters of the period, however, were 
not enlisted on one side. There is ex- 
tant an exhortation against marriage, 
addressed to the clergy, which consists 
of a violent invective against the sex, 
recapitulating the customary accusa- 
tions against women with all the brutal 
coarseness of the age : — 

Hasc est iniquitas omnia adulterre 
Qui virum proprium vellet non vivere, 
Ut det adultero non cessat rapere — 
Desistat igitur clerus nunc nubere. 

Du Meril, op. cit. p. 184. 
The " Confessio Goliae" feelingly be- 
wails the difficulty of rendering obe- 
dience to the new regulations : — 

Res est arduissima vincere naturam, 

In aspectu virginum inenteui ferre 

puram; 
Juvenes non possumus legem sequi 

duram, 
Leviumque corporum non habere curam. 
Quis in igne positus igne non uratur? 
Quis in mundo demorans castus habe- 

atur? 
Ubi Yenus digito juvenes venatur 
Oculis illaqueat, facie prsedatur? 

Mapes's Poems, p. 72. 

2 Matt. Paris ann. 1250. 

This Boniface was brother of the 
Duke of Savoy, and was one of the 
Italian prelates whose intrusion into 
the choice places of the Anglican 



church was a source of intense irrita- 
tion. The career of another brother, 
Philip, is an instructive illustration 
of the ecclesiastical manners of the 
age. He was in deacon's orders, and 
yet, as a leader of condottieri, he was 
a strenuous supporter of Innocent IV. 
in his quarrel with Frederic II. He 
was created Archbishop of Lyons, 
Bishop of Valence, Provost of Bruges, 
and Dean of Vienne, and, after enjoy- 
ing these miscellaneous dignities for 
some twenty years, when at length 
Clement IV. insisted on his ordination 
and consecration, he threw off his epis- 
copal robe, married first the heiress of 
Franehe-Comte and then a niece of 
Innocent IV. — dying at last as Duke 
of Savov (Milman, Latin Christ. IV. 
326). 

The indignation felt at the standing 
grievance of foreign prelates is quaintly 
expressed a century later by Laug- 
lande — 

And a peril to the pope 
And prelates that he niaketb, 
That bere bisshopes names 
Of Bethleem and Babiloigne, 
That huppe aboute in Engelond 
To halwe mennes auteres, 
And crepe amonges curatours, 
And confessen ageyn the lawe. 

Piers Ploughman, Wright's Edition, 
1. 10695-702. 



MARRIAGE BECOMES OBSOLETE. 



291 



marriage of his clergy under pain of suspension and deprivation. 1 
It is perhaps noteworthy, however, that, not long after this, Home, 
in his Myrror of Justice, when treating of exceptions to the benefit 
of clergy, specifies second marriages, but not single marriages, as 
depriving clerks of the privilege of ecclesiastical trial. 2 

By this time, however, priestly marriage may be considered to 
have become nearly obsolete in England. When, in 1268, the 
Cardinal-legate Ottoboni held a great national council in London, 
and renewed the constitutions of his predecessor Otto, he made no 
allusion to marriage, and only denounced the practice of concu- 
binage, which he endeavored to eradicate by commanding all arch- 
deacons to make a thorough inquisition annually into the morals of 
the clergy under their jurisdiction. 3 These constitutions of Otto 
and Ottoboni long remained the law of the English church, and we 
find them constantly referred to in the canons of councils and pas- 
torals of bishops, ceaselessly laboring to effect the impossible enforce- 
ment of discipline ; even as late as 1399 the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury ordered his suffragans to have them read and explained in the 
vernacular in all their episcopal synods. 4 How hard was the task 
may be readily conceived when we see, in 1279, the primate Peckham, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, applying to Rome for assistance in pros- 
ecuting a certain bishop against whom he had long been vainly en- 
deavoring to bring the law to bear. A concubine had confessed to 
having borne five children to the offender; 5 he had himself admitted 
his guilt in a private interview with Peckham, for which he had 
afterwards claimed the seal of the confessional ; yet the archbishop 
complains that his efforts will be unsuccessful unless he is fortified 



1 Nullusque eorum uxorem ducat: 
et si antequam sacros ordines suscepit 
uxorem duxerit, seu postea, si bene- 
ficium habeat, ipso privetur, et ab 
exseculione sui officii suspendatur, nisi 
in casu a jure concesso. — Constit. 
Walteri Episc. Dunelmens. (Wilkins, 
I. 705). 

2 Sir, il ne doit mie joyer du benefit 
de celle priviledge, car il ad forfait per 
vice de Bigamy; comme celui qui ad 
espouse vefve ou plusors femmes. — 
Myrror of Justice, cap. in. sect. v. 

3 Concil. Londiniens. ann. 1268 c. 8 
(Wilkins, II. 5). 



4 Convocat. Cantuar. ann. 1399 c. 
13 (Wilkins, III. 240). 

5 The canon law maintained the 
extraordinary doctrine that the con- 
fession of the guilty woman could not 
be received as evidence against her 
accomplice, though it was good as 
against herself. " Unde nee sacerdotes 
accusare nee in eos testificari valent. 
. . . Quia ergo ista de se confitetur, 
super alienum crimen ei credi non 
oportet ; sed contra earn sua confessio 
interpretanda est" (Gratian. P. II. 
c. xv. q. 3). It would be hard to 
imagine a rule of practice better fitted 
to repress investigation and to shield 
offenders. 



292 



NOEMAN ENGLAND. 



with letters from the pope himself. His strict injunctions of secrecy 
on his correspondent, and his evident dread lest the criminal's agents 
in Rome should get wind of the application, show how difficult was 
the enterprise, and how rarely prelates could be expected to under- 
take duties so arduous and so unpromising. 1 

Perhaps the man to whom the church owed most for his energy 
and activity in promoting the cause of reform was the celebrated 
Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. The leading part which he 
took in the political troubles of the stormy reign of Henry III. has 
thrown his ecclesiastical character somewhat into the shade, and he 
is better known as the friend of Leicester than as the untiring 
churchman. Notwithstanding his consistent opposition to Henry 
III. and to the encroachments of the papacy, he was the inflexible 
enemy of clerical irregularities, and he enforced the decretals 
throughout his diocese with as firm a hand as that which he raised 
in defence of the rights of the nation and the privileges of the 
Anglican church. Thus, in 1251, he made a rigorous inquisition in 
his bishopric, forcing all his beneficed clergy to the observance of 
the strictest chastity, removing from their houses all suspected women, 
and punishing transgressors with deprivation. It is not easy to 
approve of his brutal expedient for testing the virtue of the inmates 
of his nunneries, 2 the adoption of which could only be justified and 
suggested by the* conviction that general licentiousness was every- 
where prevalent ; and though such treatment of the spouses of Christ 
was to the last degree degrading, yet it was doubtless more efficacious 
than the ordeal of the Eucharist, which was frequently resorted to 
in special cases. Not only, however, did he thus endeavor to reform 
the morals of his flock, but he made the closest scrutiny into the 
character of applicants for ordination. In this he was largely aided 
by his ascetic friend and admirer, Adam de Marisco, and the corre- 
spondence between them shows not only the importance which they 
reasonably attached to the subject, but the sleepless vigilance required 
to counteract the prevalent immorality of the clergy, and the incred- 
ible laxity with which the patrons of livings bestowed the benefices 
in their gift. 3 



y 



i Wilkins, II. 40. 

2 Ad domos religiosarum veniens, 
fecit exprimi mammillas earundem, ut 
sic physice si esset inter eas corruptela, 
experiretur — Matt. Paris ann. 1251. 

3 Adse de Marisco Epist. passim 



(Monumenta Franciscan a). How little 
the character of the clergy had im- 
proved under the ceaseless efforts of 
the preceding half century may be 
guessed from Adam's description of 
his contemporary brethren — " Nihil 
aliud pervicacissima caninae voraci- 



SACERDOTAL CELIBACY ESTABLISHED. 



293 



The rule was now fairly established and generally acknowledged ; 
concubinage, though still prevalent — nay, in fact almost universal — 
was not defended as a right, but was practised with what conceal- 
ment was possible, and was the object of unremitting assault from 
councils and prelates. To enter into the details of the innumerable 
canons and constitutions directed against the ineradicable vice during 
the succeeding half century would be unprofitable. Their endless 
iteration is only interesting as proving their inefficacy. A popular 
satirist of the reign of Edward II. declares that bribery of the eccle- 
siastical officials insured the domestic comfort of the clergy and their 
female companions; 1 while in time the canon law seems to have lost 
all its terrors. One of the earliest acts of the reign of Henry VII. 
was a law empowering the ecclesiastical officials to imprison "priests, 
clerks, and religious men" convicted of incontinence, and guaran- 
teeing them against prosecution by the offenders. 2 That the aid of 
the secular legislator should thus have been invoked for protection 
under such circumstances showed the audacity resulting from long 
immunity, and is the abject confession that the ceaseless labor of 
four centuries had utterly failed. 

In one part of England, however, the reform seems to have pene- 
trated even more slowly. We have seen above, on the testimony of 
Giraldus Cambrensis, that in the early part of the thirteenth century 
the marriage of priests and the hereditary transmission of benefices 
were almost universal in Wales. As in the wild fastnesses of the 
Principality the ecclesiastical regulations seemed powerless, recourse 
was had to the secular law, which was employed to inflict various 



tatis impudentia consectantur, quam 
caducam fastuum arrogantiam, quam 
mobilem qusestuum amuentiam, quam 
sordidam luxuum petulentiam, auc- 
toritatem summse salvationis in per- 
ditionis aeternse crudelitatem depra- 
vantes ; cemimus usquequaquam quasi 
solutum Satanam eftrsenata tyrannide 
beatam haereditatem benedicti Dei im- 
manissime depopulari." — Ibid. Epist. 
ccxlvii. P. i. c. 18. 

1 And ttrise ersodeknes that ben set to 

visite holi churche, 
Everich fondeth hu he may shrewede- 

lichest worche ; 
He wole take mede of that on and that 

other, 



And late the parsoun hare a wyf and 
the prest another, 

At wille; 
Coveytise shal stoppen here mouth, and 

maken hem al stille. 
"Wright, Political Songs of England, 
p 326. 

So Robert Langlande states 

" In the consistorie bifore the commissarie 

He cometh noght but ofte; 

For hir lawe dureth over longe, 

But if thei lacchen silver, 

And matrimoyne for moneie 

Maken and unmaken." 

Vision of Piers Ploughman, v. 10102 
-7 (Wright's Edition). 

2 1 Henry VII. cap. 4. 



294 



NORMAN ENGLAND 



disabilities on offenders and their offspring, and the repetition of 
these shows how obstinately the custom was adhered to by the clergy 
until a comparatively late period. Thus, in the Gwentian and Di- 
metian Codes there is a provision that the son of a married priest, 
born after the ordination of his father, shall not share in the paternal 
estate ; x and this provision is retained and repeated in a collection of 
laws which contains the date of 2 Henry IV., showing it to be pos- 
terior to the year 14 00. 2 The same collection enumerates married 
priests among " thirteen things corrupting the world, and which will 
ever remain in it; and it can never be delivered of them." 3 In the 
same spirit, the Book of Cynog, which is of uncertain date, declares 
"nor is a married priest, as he has relinquished his law, to be cred- 
ited in law," and it therefore directs that the testimony of such wit- 
nesses shall not be receivable in court ; * while another collection of 
laws, occurring in a MS. of the fifteenth century, repeats the pro- 
vision — "their testimony is not to be credited in any place, and they 
are excluded from the law, unless they ask a pardon from the pope 
or a bishop, through a public penance." 5 In fact, we may, perhaps, 
almost hazard the conclusion that, notwithstanding the efforts of both 
ecclesiastical and secular legislators, sacerdotal marriage scarcely 
became obsolete in Wales before it was once more recognized as 
legitimate under the Reformation. 



1 G-wentian Code, Book II. chap. xxx. 
" Because he was begotten contrary to 
decree." — Dimetian Code, Book ii. 
chap. viii. $ 27 (Aneurin Owen's 
Ancient Laws and Institutes of "Wales, 
Vol. I. pp. 761, 445). Of the latter of 
these codes, the recension which has 
reached us contains alterations made 
by Bys son of Grufudd, showing it to 
be posterior at least to the year 1180. 



2 Anomalous Laws, Book x. chap, 
vii. I 19 (Owen, Yol. II. p. 331). 

3 Ibid. chap. ix. (Yol. II. p. 347). 

4 Ibid. Book viii. chap. xi. § 19 
(Yol. II. p. 205). 

5 Ibid. Book xi. chap. iii. \ 15 
(Yol. II. p. 409). 



XVIII. 
IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. 



In a previous section it has already been shown that the rule of 
celibacy was observed by the Celtic churches of the British Islands 
during a period in which their Christianity was a model for the rest 
of Europe. Their religion, however, could not preserve its purity 
and simplicity amid the overwhelming barbarism of those dreary 
ages. From an ancient commentary on the "Cain Patraic," or 
Patrick's Law, of uncertain date, but probably belonging to the ninth 
or tenth century, it would seem as though there were at that time 
two classes of bishops, one bound by monastic vows, the other per- 
mitted to marry ; and, what is somewhat singular, the law appears to 
favor the latter, for the " cumad espuc," or virgin bishop, is con- 
demned to perpetual degradation or to the life of a hermit for offences 
which the " bishop of one wife " can redeem by prompt penance. 1 

The Feini, prior to the advent of St. Patrick, were far in advance 
of the contemporary barbarian tribes, and their conversion to Chris- 
tianity introduced a new and powerful element of progress. It was 
not lasting, however, and they lapsed into a condition but little 
removed from that of savages. The marriage-tie was virtually un- 
known or habitually disregarded among the laity. 2 What was the 



1 Senchus Mor. Introduction, pp. 
57-9. (Edited by Hancock, Dublin, 
1865.) 

2 Lanfranci Epistt. 37, 38. — Bernardi 
Vit. S. Malachise cap. iii. viii. — The 
rudeness of the age may be measured 
by the fact that when Malachi deter- 
mined to adorn the venerable monas- 
tery of Benchor with an oratory of 
stone such as he had seen abroad, the 
mere laying of the foundations aroused 
the wonderment of the people, to whom 
buildings of that kind were unknown — 



"quod in terra ilia necdum ejusmodi 
sedificia invenirentur" — and his ene- 
mies took advantage of the feeling to 
interfere with the work on the ground 
that such an enterprise was unheard of, 
and that so stupendous an undertaking 
could never be accomplished. This 
piece of presumption was promptly re- 
buked by the death of the ringleader, 
and by the finding in the excavations 
of a treasure which enabled St. Malachi 
to execute his plans (Vit. S. Malach. 
c. xxviii.). St. Bernard, who derived 



296 



IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. 



condition of the clergy may be inferred from the fact that the episco- 
pates were regarded as the private property of certain families in 
which they descended by hereditary succession. Thus, in the pri- 
matial see of Armagh, fifteen archbishops were of one house, the last 
eight of whom were married. At length Celsus, who died about the 
year 1130, bequeathed the dignity to his friend St. Malachi. The 
kindred rose in arms at this infringement of their rights, and two of 
their members successively occupied the position, which Malachi was 
not able to obtain until the anger of God had miraculously destroyed 
the whole family. 1 

During all this period the Irish church had been completely inde- 
pendent of the central authority at Rome, but the extension of 
influence resulting from the labors of Hildebrand and his successors 
soon began to make itself felt. In the quarrels concerning the suc- 
cession of Archbishop Celsus, there figures a certain Bishop Gilbert, 
who is described as being the first papal legate seen in Ireland. 2 
When Malachi abandoned Armagh and revived the extinct episcopate 
of Down, he resolved on a pilgrimage to Rome to obtain the pallium, 
a powerful instrument of papal authority, until then unknown on the 
island ; and perhaps the opposition manifested to his wishes by his 
friends as well as by the authorities may be attributable to a repug- 
nance towards the gradual encroachments of Romanizing influence. 3 

Malachi returned from Rome armed with legatine powers, and 
proceeded vigorously with the reforms which he had long before 
commenced. He held numerous councils, extirpating abuses every- 
where, renovating the ancient rules of discipline and introducing new 
ones, bending all his energies to abrogating the national institutions 
and replacing them with those of Rome. 4 The earnest asceticism of 
his nature, exaggerated by the training of his youth, led him to give 
a strongly monastic character to the church of which he was thus the 
second founder. On his journey homeward from Rome, he had 
tarried a second time at Clairvaux to see his friend St. Bernard, and 



his impressions from Malachi and his 
companions, thus describes the Irish of 
Connaught, "sic protervos ad mores, 
sic ferales ad ritus, sic ad fidem impios, 
ad leges barbaros, cervicosos ad disci- 
plinam, spurcos ad vitam. Christiani 
nomine, re pagani. Non decimas, non 
primitias dare, non legitima inire con- 
jugia, non facere confessiones ; poeni- 
tentias nee qui peteret, nee qui daret 



penitus invenire. 
admodum erant. : 



Ministri altaris pauci 
— Ibid. cap. viii. 



1 Ibid. c. x. xi. xii. xiii. 

2 Ibid. c. x. 

3 Ibid. c. xv. 

4 Ibid. c. xviii. — Fiunt de medio 
barbaric^ leges, Romanse introducun- 
tur. — Ibid. c. viii. 



REFOKMS OF MALACHI 



297 



had left there four of his attendants to be exercised in the severe 
Cistercian discipline that they might serve as missionaries and as 
models for his compatriots, who had heard, indeed, of monkhood, but 
had never seen it. 1 His efforts, in this respect, were to a consider- 
able extent successful, at least in a portion of the island, though his 
death in 1149, at the comparatively early age of 54, cut short his 
labors before they could yield their full fruit. 2 

The incongruous character thus imparted to the Irish church is 
described by Giraldus Cambrensis some forty years later. The pre- 
lates were selected from the monasteries, and the church was com- 
pletely monastic. Chastity was the only rule of discipline thoroughly 
preserved, and Giraldus confesses his wonder that it could be main- 
tained, in contradiction to all former experience, when gluttony and 
drunkenness were carried to excess. The monastic principle of 
selfishness was all-pervading, and the pastors took no care of their 
flocks. Among the people, marriage was still unknown, incest was 
of common occurrence, even the rudiments of Christian faith were left 
untaught, and the church was regarded without reverence. 3 His 
account of the absence of regular stipends and tithes is confirmed by 
the fact that an Irish bishop attending the council of Lateran in 
1179, in complaining of the condition of his native church, stated 
that his only revenues were derived from three milch cows, which 
his flock were bound to replace as they became dry. 4 This poverty, 
however apostolic in itself, can only, in an age of magnificent sacer- 
dotalism, be regarded as an indication of a church whose degradation 
could command neither the respect nor the support of its children. 
That the reforms of Malachi, one-sided as they were, extended only 
over a portion of the island, is evident from the inquiry which, a few 
years later, the Archbishop of Cashel addressed to Clement III. as 



1 Ibid. c. xvi. — Illae gentes quae a 
diebus antiquis monachi quidem no- 
men audierunt, monachum non vide- 
runt. 

2 In the hymn in which St. Bernard 
celebrated the virtues of his friend he 
compares him to the Apostles — 

Sobrius victus, castitas perennis, 
Fides, doctrina, animarum lucra, 
Meritis parem coetui permiscet 
Apostolorum. 

3 Sermo Giraldi in Concil. Dublinens. 
(De Eebus a se Gestis Lib. n. c. 14). 



In the " Topographia Hibernica," 
Dist. in. cap. 27, Giraldus confirms his 
assertion as to the chastity and drunk- 
enness of the Irish clergy, but admits 
that they observed the canonical fasts 
with praiseworthy strictness. 

* Hist. Archiep. Bremens ann. 1179 
(Lindenbrog. Script. Septent. p. 107). 

It must be borne in mind, however, 
that in the Irish church bishops were 
almost as numerous as in the primitive 
church of Africa — "singula pene ec- 
clesiae singulos haberent episcopos." — 
Bernard. Vit. S. Malachiae cap. x. 



298 IKELAND AND SCOTLAND. 

to whether the children of bishops could receive orders and hold 
benefices ; and the exceptional character of the Irish establishment 
was recognized by the pope when he decided that they could, provided 
they were born in wedlock, and were otherwise worthy of position. 1 
This requisite of legitimacy was apparently not imposed in ignorance, 
for at the council of Cashel in 1171 we find an effort made to enforce 
Christian marriage among the people, who are still described as in- 
dulging in unrestricted polygamy and disregarding the nearest ties 
of consanguinity. 2 

When about this period the English commenced the conquest 
which was to lead to five centuries of cruel anarchy, they of course 
carried with them their civil and ecclesiastical institutions. The 
original conquerors — the Butlers, the Clares, and the Fitzgeralds — 
speedily became incorporated with the native race, and were as Irish 
as the O'Briens and the McCauras. Although the royal authority 
was limited practically to the confines of the Pale, and embraced 
little beyond the Ostman ports, yet it is easy to understand that the 
clerical license habitual to the English spread beyond the political 
boundaries, and the monastic spirit of the Hibernians was grievously 
wounded by the unchastity which was disseminated like a contagion 
from the dissolute priests who followed in the wake of Strong-bow 
and Prince John. 3 Not twenty years after the first invasion, a 
council, summoned in 1186 by John in Dublin, was troubled by a 
quarrel between the Saxon priests of Wexford, who mutually accused 
each other of publicly marrying and keeping wives. This being duly 
proved, they were promptly degraded, to the intense satisfaction of 
the Irish clergy, triumphant in their own comparative purity of 
morals. 4 When, therefore, in 1205, Innocent III. specially ordered 
his legate, Cardinal Julian, to put an end to the hereditary trans- 
mission of benefices common in Ireland, the abuse to which he 
referred was probably confined to the English Pale. 5 The church 
establishments, in fact, were distinct, and consequently when an Irish 
synod was held in Dublin, in 1217, its canons cannot be considered 
as having authority beyond the narrow territory through which the 
king's writ would likewise run. Those canons show us that the 



1 Cap. 13 Extra Lib. I. Tit. xvii. 

2 Benedicti Abbatis Gesta Henrici II. arm. 1171. 

3 Girald. Cambrens. op. cit. Lib. II. c. 13. 

* Girald. Cambrens. loc. cit. 5 Innocent PP. III. Eegest. v. 158. 



THE ANGLO-IRISH CHURCH — THE CULDEES. 299 

morality of the Saxon priesthood had not improved by the example 
made of the priests of Wexford. The denunciations of concubinage 
indicate the prevalence of that vice, and the severities threatened 
against the unfortunate women contrast strangely with the lenity 
shown to their more guilty partners. 1 A century later, if we may 
believe the declaration of the synod of Ossory in 1320, the evil con- 
tinued to nourish, open, avowed, and universal, resisting alike the 
authority of the church and the efforts to repress it by severity. 2 
Whether the offenders dismissed their consorts after the thirty days' 
grace allowed by the synod may well be doubted. With the spread 
of English domination, the purity of the native church disappeared, 
and so great became the general disregard of the canons that shortly 
before the Reformation it was not an unusual thing for Irish priests 
to be openly married, nor do those who did so seem to have thereby 
forfeited the esteem of their neighbors. 3 



In Scotland, the Christianity introduced by St. Columba had 
fallen into the hands of the Culdees. These were originally monks 
of a more than ordinary strictness of discipline, to whom the earliest 
recorded allusion occurs in Ireland towards the close of the eighth 
century — the name, Cele-de (Keledeus, or Servus Dei) meaning 
simply Servant of God. In the course of time the Culdees had so 
relaxed their rule that they reappear in the eleventh century as an 
order nominally of monks, yet fulfilling the functions of the secular 
clergy, and enjoying free permission to marry, only abstaining from 
their wives when employed in the actual ministry of the altar. With 
marriage had come the hereditary transmission of the endowments of 
the church to their children, so that the ancient abbeys and churches 
were well-nigh stripped of all their possessions, and the distinction 
between clergy and laity was rather in term than in fact. It may 
please the poet to construct a world of his own, peopled by imaginary 
beings of angelic purity — 



ann. 1217 



1 Concil. Dublinens 
(Wilkins, I. 548). 

2 Quia putridum libidinosse spur- 
citise contagium adeo apud clericos et 
presbyteros invaluit his diebus, quod 
nee auctoritas evangelica, nee canon- 
ica severitas illud hactenus extirpare 
potuit, quia in suae perpetuse damna- 



tions periculum, et ordinis ecclesias- 
tics ignominiam, populique pernicio- 
sum exemplum manifestum, adhuc 
suas publice detinent concubinas, etc. — 
Constit. Synod. Ossoriens. (Wilkins, 
II. 502). 

3 Bradshaw's Enniskillen (London 
Athengeum, Sept. 7th, 1878, p. 305). 



300 



IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. 



Peace to their shades ! The pure Culdees 

"Were Albyn's earliest priests of God, 
Ere yet an island of her seas 

By foot of Saxon monk was trod, 
Long ere her churchmen by bigotry 
Were barred from wedlock's holy tie. 
'Twas then that Aodh, famed afar, 

In Iona preached the word with power, 
And Keullura, beauty's star, 

"Was the partner of his bower — 

but in sober truth the Culdees were pure as long as they kept the 
tradition of their founder, and it was not until they sank to a level 
with their savage compatriots that they transgressed the rule and 
became worldly and corrupt. 1 In 1125 the Cardinal-legate, John of 
Crema, whose unlucky adventure in London has been already alluded 
to, visited Scotland in the execution of his reformatory mission. 
There he found on the throne David I., a prince whose life was 
devoted to rescuing his subjects from their primaeval barbarism. We 
know few details of the history of those times, but it is fair to con- 
jecture that the exhortations of the legate had a share in arousing 
David to a realization of the deficiencies and the corruptions of the 
Scottish church, and in guiding him to the course which he adopted 
in its reformation. After some fruitless efforts to restore the order 
of Culdees to its original condition, he resolved on the sweeping 
measure of removing all who should prove incorrigible. They were 
accordingly turned out bodily from their establishments, such prop- 
erty as could be traced was restored, and donations on an extended 
scale were made both to the old foundations and to the new ones 
which the royal reformer established — donations which gained for 
him, from an ungodly descendant, the appellation of " Ane soir sanct 
for the crown." These foundations were then filled with regular 
clergy, brought from France and England — chiefly canons of the 
order of St. Augustin — and the unfortunate Culdees were turned 
adrift unless they would promise to observe the strictness of monastic 
rule. It is probable that in a few places they did so, for references 
to Culdees still occur occasionally even in the next century, but these 
measures were effective and practically they and their customs dis- 
appeared together. 2 



1 Haddan and Stubbs, II. 175-80. 

2 Haddan and Stubbs, II, 216, 224-7, 
235. — See also Cosmo Innes' " Scotland 



in the Middle Ages," pp. 107 sqq. We 
may assume that John of Crema or the 
pope must have conferred extraordinary 



THE SCOTTISH CHURCH REFORMED. 



301 



In a church thus constructed from the regular clergy, the heresy 
of marriage could find no foothold, especially as it had been so sternly 
punished in the expulsion of the Culdees. Still was the desired 
purity not yet attained. In 1181, during the long quarrel between 
William the Lion and the papacy on the subject of the archbishopric 
of St. Andrews, an interdict was pronounced on all ecclesiastics who 
should refuse to recognize the papal candidate John, whereupon the 
King persecuted those who obeyed the mandate, and the chronicler, 
in expatiating upon his cruelty, is careful to mention that he did 
not spare their children, even to babes in their mothers' arms, who 
were remorselessly driven into exile. 1 The state of things indicated 
by this remained without improvement. In 1225, Honorius III. 
ordered the Scottish ecclesiastics to assemble in council for the cor- 
rection of the many enormities which were committed with impunity ; 
and the council held in obedience to the papal command denounced 
the shameless licentiousness of the clergy as a disgrace to the church. 2 
Inquests to detect the offenders, suspension and deprivation to punish 
them, were ordered with all the verbal energy of which we have 
already witnessed so many examples, and were attended with the 
same plentiful lack of success. With what disposition the clergy 
regarded these efforts for their improvement we may guess from the 
reception which they gave to the constitutions of Cardinal Ottoboni. 
Reference has already been made to the council held by that legate 
in London in 1268. The church of Scotland had been ordered to 
join in this council, and had sent two bishops and two abbots as its 
representative delegates. These took home with them the constitu- 
tions of Ottoboni, which the clergy of Scotland utterly refused to 
obey. 3 



powers on David before he could have 
the presumption to thus arbitrarily 
regulate and revolutionize the church. 
This, indeed, may readily be conceived 
as probable when we reflect how little 
authority Rome could have exercised 
over the Culdees, and how readily 
Scotland must have been subjected to 
the central power by placing her eccle- 
siastical establishment in the hands of 
the Sassenach monks. 

Towards the end of the 12th century, 



Giraldus Cambrensis calls the Culdees 
of Bardsey in Wales, u Coelibes vel 
Colidei " and characterizes them as 
" religiosissimi " (Itin. Cambr. n. 6 — 
ap. Haddan and Stubbs, II. xxiii.). 

1 Gesta Henrici II. T. I. p. 282 (M. 
R. Series). 

2 Concil. Scotican. ann. 1225 c. 18, 
62 (Wilkins, I. 610). 

3 Chron. Paslatens. ann. 1268 (Wil- 
kins, II. 19). 



XIX. 
SPAIN 



We have already seen (p. 121) that among the Wisigoths of Spain 
the rule of celibacy had never been successfully enforced, and that 
during the later period of the Gothic dynasty the demoralization of 
the clergy was daily increasing. The Saracenic invasion, and the 
subsequent struggles of the Christians, who founded petty kingdoms 
among the wild mountainous regions of the North and East of the 
Peninsula, were not favorable to the growth of regular discipline and 
settled observances. The centralized sacerdotalism of Rome, which 
took so remarkable an extension in the ninth and tenth centuries, 
and which penetrated every portion of the Carlovingian empire, was 
powerless to intrude into the strongholds of the Jalikiah, whence the 
descendants of Pelayo and his companions gradually extended their 
frontiers from Oviedo to Toledo. Communication with the apostolic 
city was rare. The nominal subjection of Barcelona and Navarre to 
the Carlovingians, indeed, brought the eastern provinces of Spain 
under the domination of the Archbishops of Narbonne, and kept 
them, to a certain extent, under the influences which were moulding 
the rest of Europe ; but the kingdoms of Leon and Castile grew up 
in complete ecclesiastical independence. Even at the close of the 
eleventh century a Spanish ecclesiastic describes his contemporary 
brethren as rude and illiterate, owning no obedience to the mother 
church of Rome, and governed by the discipline of Toledo. 1 Wild 
and insubordinate as was a large portion of the European clergy, the 
ecclesiastics of Spain were even wilder and more insubordinate. 
Another writer of the period, himself a canon of Compostella, and 
subsequently Bishop of Mondonego, speaking of his brother canons 
previous to the reforms of Diego Gelmirez, denounces them as reck- 



1 Hist. Compostellan. Lib. II. c. 1. 



MAKKIAGE UNIVERSAL. 



303 



less and violent men, ready for any crime, prompt in quarrel, and 
even occasionally indulging in mutual slaughter. 1 How little, indeed, 
there was to distinguish the clerk from the layman is evident from 
a regulation promulgated by the council of Compostella in 1113. It 
provides that all priests, gentlemen, and peasants shall devote them- 
selves to wolf-hunting on every Sunday, except Easter and Pentecost, 
under a penalty of a fine of five sols for the priest and gentleman, 
and one sol, or a sheep, for the peasant — visitation of the sick being 
the only excuse exempting the priest from the performance of this 
duty. Every church, moreover, was bound to furnish for the hunt 
seven iron-tipped reeds. 2 A similar condition of society is indicated 
at the other end of Spain, where, in 1027, the Synod of Elna, in 
Roussillon, had forbidden, under pain of excommunication, any one to 
attack a monk or a clerk who was without arms. 3 

In such lack of social organization it is easy to imagine that the 
rule of celibacy received little attention. According to Mariana, the 
clergy of the period were, for the most part, publicly married ; * and 
when, in 1056, the council of Compostella specifically forbade to 
bishops and monks all intercourse with women, except with mothers, 
aunts, and sisters wearing the monastic habit, 5 the inference is fair 
that even so elementary a prohibition was an innovation, and that 
the secular clergy, below the episcopate, were not regarded as subject 
to any restriction. 

In the comprehensive efforts, however, made during the later half 
of the eleventh century by the Roman church to bring all Chris- 
tendom under its domination, the rising states of Spain were not 
likely to remain undisturbed in their independent isolation ; nor was 
it to be expected that so complete a defiance of the canons would be 
passed unobserved by the pontiffs who were convulsing the rest of 
Europe in their efforts to reform the church. Accordingly, in 1068, 
we find the Cardinal Hugo of Silva Candida, as legate of Alexander 
II., assembling a council at Girona, and procuring the adoption of a 



1 Hist. Compostellan. Lib. I. c. 20. 

2 Didaci Decret. No. 15 (Hist. Com- 
postellan. Lib. i. cap. 90). 

3 Synod. Helenens. ann. 1027 c. 3 
(Aguirre, IV. 393). 

4 Hist, de Espana, Lib. ix. cap. xi. 

5 Concil. Compostellan. ann. 1056 
can. 3. An allusion, however, to those 



who left the church and married being 
allowed to return on abandoning their 
wives, would seem to show that some 
supervision was exercised. The council 
of Coyanza, in 1050, had forbidden the 
residence of strange women, except 
mother, aunt, or step-mother, but says 
nothing as to marriage. — Con. Coyacens. 
ann. 1050 c. iii. (Aguirre IV. 405, 
407). 



304 



SPAIN. 



regulation reducing to the condition of laymanship all who, in holy 
orders, either entered into matrimony or kept concubines; while 
those who should dismiss their wives were promised immunity for the 
past and security for the future. 1 In 1077, Gregory VII. sent a 
certain Bishop Amandus as his legate, with an epistle addressed to 
the Spaniards, in which he told them that Spain had anciently 
belonged to St. Peter and the Roman church ; that the carelessness 
of his predecessors, and the Saracenic conquest, had caused the papal 
rights to be forgotten, but that the time had come for them to be 
revendicated, and that he consequently claimed implicit obedience. 2 
Accordingly, in 1078, we find the legate presiding over another 
council at Girona, which confirmed the canons of the previous one, 
and added several others to prevent the ordination of sons of priests, 
and the hereditary transmission of benefices. 3 Such slender reforms 
as may have resulted from these efforts were probably confined to 
Catalonia and Aragon ; but not long afterwards influences were 
brought to bear upon the rest of Spain, which had a powerful effect 
in extending the authority of Rome over the Peninsula. Constance 
of Burgundy, Queen of Alfonso VI. of Castile and Leon, prevailed 
upon her husband to ask of Gregory a legate to reform the church, 
and to condemn the Gothic or Mozarabic ritual, which was jealously 
preserved by the people as a symbol of their independent nationality. 
The prayer, of course, was granted. Richard, Abbot of Marseilles, 
was sent, and in 1080 he held a council at Burgos, where he com- 
manded the ordained clergy to put away their wives. The novelty 
and hardship of this order created great excitement. The pope, who 
was rightly regarded as its author, became the object of no little 
abuse and insult, and was held up to popular derision in innumerable 
lampoons. 4 

All of these efforts were nugatory. The Spaniards, engaged in an 
interminable and often doubtful struggle with the Infidel, might well 
claim consideration from the Holy Father, while the independent 
spirit which they manifested in their resistance to the introduction of 



1 Concil. Gerundens. ann. 1068 can. 
7, 8 (Labbei et Coleti T. XII.). The 
council of Toulouse, in 1056 (see ante, 
p. 255), which ordered the separation 
of priests from their wives, undertook 
to include Spain in its legislation, pre- 
sumably meaning the eastern portion 
of the Peninsula which was subject to 
the Archbishops of Narbonne. 



2 Gregor. VII. Kegist. 
Epist. 28. 



Lib. iv. 



8 Concil. Gerundens. ann. 1078 
can. 1, 3, 4, 5 (Labbei et Coleti T. 



XII.). 

* Mariana, loc. cit. 



HESITATION IN ENFORCING REFORM 



305 



the Roman ritual was a warning that it would be prudent not to 
proceed too abruptly in the process of bringing them within the fold 
of St. Peter. Whatever be the motives, indeed, which induced such 
strenuous apostles of celibacy as Gregory, Urban, Paschal, and 
Calixtus to abstain from urging upon them the reform which was so 
earnestly enforced elsewhere, certain it is that little effort was made 
to deprive the Spanish clergy of their wives. In all the epistles of 
the popes up to 1130 I can find but one allusion to the subject, 
though communication between Spain and Italy became daily more 
frequent, and the papal authority was constantly exercised with 
greater decisiveness in the internal affairs of the Spanish church. 

When, in 1101, Diego Gelmirez succeeded in obtaining the see of 
Compostella, Paschal II. addressed him an epistle, reproaching him 
with the utter contempt of discipline in his diocese, and commanding 
a reform. He chiefly complained of the incongruous common resi- 
dence of monks and nuns, which he severely condemned and per- 
emptorily prohibited, but he made some concession to the necessities 
of the time in permitting the ordination of the sons of those priests 
who had, "according to the ordinary custom of the country," mar- 
ried prior to the promulgation of what the pope significantly termed 
the Roman law ; and he carefully abstained from ordering a separa- 
tion between them and their wives, or even an enforcement of the 
canons for the future. 1 

Diego, who possessed no common measure of vigor and ambition, 
and who needed the particular favor of the popes for the success of 
his plans in elevating and aggrandizing his see, accordingly proceeded 
to reform his clergy. There is extant a minute and circumstantial 
contemporary history of his episcopate, written by his admiring dis- 
ciples, who dwell with much instance on his labors and success in 
reducing to discipline the refractory canons of his cathedral seat ; 
but in the numerous allusions to these reforms there is no mention 
of the enforcement of celibacy, while the fact that he would not 
allow them to minister at the altar without canonical vestments is 
made the subject of repeated gratulation and praise. 2 The absolute 



1 Paschal. PP. II. Epist. 57. 

2 Hist. Compostellan. Lib. i. cap. 20, 
58, 81 ; Lib. n. cap. 3 ; Lib. in. cap. 
46. — Even the moderate reforms in- 
troduced met with violent opposition 
— " nobis omnibus, veluti bruta ani- 



malia, nulla adhuc jugali asperitate 
depressa, reluctantibus " — and only a 
portion seem to have submitted " quos- 
dam sibi acquiescentes doctrina et 
operatione conspicuos divina dementia 
reddidit." 



20 



306 SPAIN. 

silence of the authors with respect to the clergy at large shows that 
the reticence of Pope Paschal was not misunderstood, and that there 
was no effort made to bring the secular priesthood under subjection 
to the Roman discipline. In the twenty-five canons of the council 
of Compostella in 1113 it therefore need not surprise us that there 
is no reference whatever to the subject, beyond an allusion to the 
children of ecclesiastics, whose nurses were declared entitled to 
clerical privileges, thus giving them a recognized and highly prized 
position. 1 

That Diego's reforms, indeed, did not extend to the abrogation of 
clerical marriage is evident from several incidental circumstances. 
Thus, in 1114, the lords of the monastery of Botoa made it over to 
the church of Santiago of Compostella, reserving to themselves their 
life interest, with a reversion to any of their descendants who should 
be ecclesiastics, and who might be willing to profess celibacy, show- 
ing that the matter was optional with the secular clergy. 2 That 
even the canons were bound by no absolute rules on the subject is 
manifested by a very curious transaction which may be worth 
recounting as illustrative in several aspects of the spirit of the age. 
In 1127, Diego, at the head of his Gallician troops, accompanied 
Alfonso VIII. on an expedition into Portugal. On their return, the 
army halted at Compostella, where the archbishop received and enter- 
tained his sovereign. They were bound by the closest ties, for Diego 
had baptized, knighted, and crowned him, and had, moreover, con- 
stantly stood his friend throughout his stormy youth, in the endless 
civil wars which marked the disastrous reign of his mother, Queen 
Urraca. Yet, prompted by evil counsellors who were jealous of 
Diego, the king suddenly demanded of him an enormous sum of 
money, to pay off the army, under threat of seizing and pillaging 
the city. After considerable resistance, Diego was forced to submit, 
and to pay a thousand marks of silver. He then sought a private 
interview, in which he solemnly and affectionately warned Alfonso 
of the ruin of his soul which would ensue if he did not undergo 
penance for thus impiously spoiling the Apostle Santiago. Al- 
fonso listened humbly, and professed entire willingness to repent, 
but for the difficulty that he had always been taught that penitence 
was fruitless without restitution, and restitution he was unable and 



1 Didaci Decreta, No. 21 (Hist. I 2 Ibid. Lib. i. cap. 100. —« Si qui ex 
Compostell. Lib. I. cap. 96). eorum progenie clerici esse et ssecu- 

I lariter continere vellent." 



SACERDOTAL MARRIAGE NOT DISTURBED. 



307 



unwilling to make. Diego then suggested that he should meet the 
chapter and discuss the case, to which he graciously assented. In 
the assembly which followed, Diego proposed that the king should 
follow the example of his father, Raymond of Grallicia, in commend- 
ing himself to the peculiar patronage of Santiago, and in bequeathing 
his body to be buried in their church, promising, moreover, that if 
he should do so they would pray specially for him, which, from the 
promise of his youth, bade fair to be no easy task. Alfonso was 
delighted to escape so easily: he eagerly accepted the proposition, 
and added that he would like to become a canon of their church, in 
order to enjoy the fullest possible share in the Masses of such holy 
men. To this the chapter assented at once ; he was forthwith duly 
installed as a canon of the church which he had just despoiled, and 
his conscience was set at rest, while the church felt that it had 
acquired a moral supremacy over the spoiler. 1 In thus formally 
becoming a canon, there could have been no assumption of celibacy, 
expressed or implied. Alfonso was but twenty-one years of age, 
and in the following year he married Berengaria, daughter of the 
Count of Barcelona. 2 

In fact, in the absence of urgency on the part of Rome, the ques- 
tion of sacerdotal celibacy seems to have been virtually ignored in 
Spain. How little importance was attached to the preeminent sanc- 
tity of asceticism becomes evident when we are told that in the whole 
of Gallicia there was no convent of nuns until Diego, in 1129, 
founded the house of S. Maria of Conjo. 3 Equal indifference is 
manifested in the legislative assemblies of the church. The council 
of Leon and Compostella, in 1114, only prohibited the residence of 
such women as were forbidden by the canons, 4 which, in the existing 
discipline of the Spanish church, may safely be presumed to offer no 
impediment to the marriage relation ; and a synod held at Palencia 
in 1129 is even more significant in its reticence, for it merely pro- 
vides that notorious concubines of the clergy shall be ejected, without 



1 Hist. Compostellan. Lib. n. cap. 

87. 

2 The Spanish church was not alone 
in this looseness of discipline as regards 
canons. When Arthur of Britanny 
took up arms against his uncle King 
John, and advanced with an army to 
Tours at Easter, A. D. 1200, he there 
" more debito in ecclesia B. Martini in 



canonicum est receptus, et in stallum 
decani in vestibus chori, sicut canoni- 
cus installatus." — Chron. Turonens. 
ann. 1200 (Martene Ampl. Collect. V. 
1038). 

3 Hist. Compostell. Lib. in. cap. 11. 

* Ibid. Lib. i. cap. 101 (Concil- 
Legionens. ann. 1114 can. 8). 



308 



SPAIN 



apparently venturing to threaten any punishment on the reverend 
offenders. 1 

Towards the close of his restless life, however, Archbishop Diego 
found time, amid his military, political, and ecclesiastical schemes of 
aggrandizement, to undertake the much needed reform of a single 
monastery. The Abbot of S. Pelayo de Antealtaria was a paragon 
of brutish sensuality, who wasted the revenues of his house in riotous 
living and took no shame in a numerous progeny. The archbishop 
remonstrated with him long and earnestly, both in public and pri- 
vate : seven times in the general chapter of the diocese he admon- 
ished and threatened the offender without result. At length, in 
1130, after forbearance so remarkable, Diego held a chapter in the 
abbey for his trial, when he was proved by competent witnesses to 
have kept no less than seventy concubines. He was accordingly 
deposed, but was so far from being canonically punished that a bene- 
fice in the abbey lands was assigned for his support. A new abbot 
was then appointed, who swore to observe the Benedictine rule as 
far as he should find himself able to do so. 2 It is a significant com- 
mentary on the state of discipline and opinion to find so weak an 
effort to remove and punish the grossest licentiousness characterized 
by the biographer of Diego with the warmest expressions of wonder- 
ing admiration as a work which doubtless gave ineffable satisfaction 
to the Divine Omnipotence, and which was without example in 
previous history. 

It is very evident that the pontiffs who so energetically enforced 
the rule of celibacy throughout the rest of Europe were content to 
offer little opposition to the obstinacy of the Celtiberian priesthood. 
We can safely conclude, indeed, that matters were allowed to remain 
virtually undisturbed, and that the clergy were permitted to retain 
their wives. A council held in Gallicia in the early part of the 
thirteenth century, for the purpose of reforming ecclesiastical dis- 
cipline, preserves absolute silence on the subject of marriage and 
concubinage; 3 and, about the middle of the same century, we find 
Alfonso the Wise of Castile obliged to formally interdict matrimony 
to those in holy orders. In the elaborate code drawn up by that 



1 Concil. Palentin. ann. 1129 can. 
5. — "Concubines clericorum manifest* 
ejiciantur." 



2 Hist. Compostellan. Lib. ill. cap. 
20. — "Pro modulo suae possibilitatis. " 

3 Concil. Hispan. Ssec. XIII. (Mar- 
tene Thesaur. IV. 167). 



THE THIETEENTH CENTURY. 



309 



monarch and known as "Las Siete Partidas," there is a law punish- 
ing sacerdotal marriage with deprivation of function and benefice ; 
while the wives, if vassals of the church, are to be reduced to servi- 
tude, and if serfs, are to be sold and the proceeds appropriated for 
the benefit of the church of the offender. The wording of the law 
would seem to indicate that it was an enactment intended to repress 
existing disorders, and not merely a well-known provision inserted 
in the code for the purpose of completing a compilation of statutes ; * 
while the existence in secular legislation of such invasions of the 
province of ecclesiastical law is a convincing proof of the continued 
independence of Rome asserted by the Spanish church and state. 
The prelates were further authorized to command the assistance of 
the secular power in enforcing these barbarous penalties to their 
full measure of severity, and this secular legislation seems to have 
accomplished what the ecclesiastical authorities had so utterly failed 
to effect. After this we hear little of regular marriage, which was re- 
placed by promiscuous concubinage or by permanent irregular unions. 
In Valencia a council in 1255 prohibited the residence with 
priests of all women, except mothers and sisters and such others 
as were beyond suspicion, but no penalty was prescribed for infrac- 
tions of the rule ; and the character of the clergy with whom the 
council had to deal is sufficiently shown by its complaint that the 
priests of the country parishes frequented the city too much and 
indulged there in disgraceful excesses, for which reason it forbids 
them from visiting the city more often than twice a month, and 
requires them to return home the same day. 2 Arnaldo de Peralta, 
Bishop of Valencia, not long after, deplores the utter contempt with 
which all previous efforts to suppress clerical concubinage had been 
received, and the prevalence of the custom by which ecclesiastics 
endowed their bastards with the spoils of the church. Yet the only 
punishment he finds himself able to threaten is a fine of thirty 
maravedis on public concubinarians and of five on parish priests who 
connive at such offences or neglect to report them to the bishop. 
Ecclesiastics, indeed, are directed to put away their children, but no 



1 "De los clerigos que casan a ben- 
diciones habiendo ordenes sagradas, 
que pena deben haber ellos et aquellas 
con quien casan. — Casandose algunt 
clerigo que hobiese orden sagrada non 
debe fincar sin pena, ca debenle vedar 
de oficio, et tollerle el beneficio que 



hobiere de la eglesia por sentencia de 
descomulgamiento fasta que la dexe 
et faga penitencia de aquel yerro, etc." 
—Siete Partidas, P. I. Tit. vi. 1. 41. 

2 Concil. Valentin. ann. 1255 
(Aguirre V. 197, 201). 



310 



SPAIN. 



penalty is indicated for disobedience. 1 The council of Gerona in 
1257 was more energetic, for it decreed the deprivation of all concu- 
binary priests who persisted in their sin, but this apparently was not 
effectual, for in 1274 the threat was repeated, with the addition that 
the women should be excommunicated and should receive after death 
the burial of asses; 2 and very similar was the legislation of the 
council of Penafiel in 1302. 3 However well meant these efforts 
were, they proved as useless as all previous ones, for in 1322 the 
council of Yalladolid, under the presidency of the papal legate, 
William Bishop of Sabina, animadverts strongly on the indecency 
of ecclesiastics, from the highest prelates down, officiating at the 
nuptials of their children, both legitimate and illegitimate. For 
those who publicly kept concubines it provides a graduated scale of 
confiscation, ending in the deprivation of the persistently contu- 
macious who gave no prospect of amendment, the exceedingly elabo- 
rate regulations prescribed showing at once the difficulty of the sub- 
ject and the importance attached to it. The acts of this council, 
moreover, are interesting as presenting the first authentic evidence 
of a custom which subsequently prevailed to some extent elsewhere, 
by which parishioners were wont to compel their priest to take a 
female consort for the purpose of protecting the virtue of their 
families from his assaults. The iniquity of this precaution seems to 
have especially scandalized the legate, and he treats the audacious 
laymen concerned in such transactions with much less ceremony than 
the concubinary clergy. 4 The elaborate regulations promulgated by 
this council produced little effect. The council of Salamanca in 
1335 renews the previous repressive legislation, adding a threat of 
ipso facto excommunication for those who give Christian burial to 
priestly concubines, including all who are present on such occasions, 
who are not to be absolved until they shall have paid a fine of fifty 
maravedis to the cathedral church. 5 At length, in 1388, a national 
council held at Palencia under Cardinal Pedro de Luna, papal 
legate, made a determined effort to eradicate the ineradicable vice. 
It renewed the regulations of the council of Valladolid, which it 



1 Constit. Synodal. Arnaldi de Pe- 
ralta Episc. Valentin. (Aguirre V. 
207-8). 

2 Synod. Gerund, ann. 1257 c^n. 4; 
ann. 1274 can. 25 (Martene Ampl. 
Coll. VIII. 1461, 1469). 



3 Concil. Penna-fidelens. ann. 
can. ii. (Aguirre V. 226). 

4 Concil. Vallis-oletan. ann. 
can. vi. vii. (Aguirre V. 243-5). 

5 Concil. Salmanticens. ann. 
can. iii. (Aguirre V. 266). 



1302 



1322 



1335 



THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 



311 



stated were not obeyed, and added to them a clause by which all 
benefices were held under a sort of tenure of chastity, and subject 
to forfeiture. Besides this, all ecclesiastics who, within two months 
of death, had kept concubines, were declared incapable of testating, 
and their property was adjudged, one- third to the fabric of their 
churches, one-third to the Ordinary of the diocese, and one-third to 
the fund for the redemption of captives under the care of the Orders 
of Trinidad and Mercede, who were empowered to seize their share. 
Moreover, all bishops were commanded to appoint official Visitors, 
who were to report at annual synods, to be held thereafter, all cases 
of infraction of the rules. 1 The desolation which the enforcement 
of such regulations would have wrought may be inferred from the 
description which a contemporary, Alvarez Pelayo, Bishop of Silva 
in Portugal, gives us of his fellow ecclesiastics. He states that 
many of the clergy in holy orders throughout the Peninsula publicly 
associated themselves with women, frequently of noble blood, bind- 
ing themselves against separation by notarial acts and solemn oaths, 
endowing their consorts with the goods of the church, and cele- 
brating with the kindred these illegal espousals as joyously as 
though they were legitimate nuptials. Yet even this flagrant defi 
ance of the canons was better than the wickedness common between 
confessors and their penitents, or than the promiscuous and unre- 
strained licentiousness of those who were not fettered by the forms 
of marriage, whose children, as Pelayo asserts, almost rivalled in 
number those of the laity. 2 These excesses were not suppressed by 
the council of Palencia. In 1429 the council of Tortosa, under the 
presidency of the Cardinal de Foix, papal legate, renewed the lament 



1 Concil. Palentin. ann. 1388 can. ii. 
(Aguirre V. 298-99). 

2 Et utinam nunquam continentiam 
promisissent, maxime Hispani et reg- 
nicolse, in quibus provinciis in pauco 
maiori numero sunt filii laicorum quam 
clericorum . . . Ssepe cum parochianis 
mulieribus quas ad confessionem ad- 
mittunt, scelestissime fornicantur . . . 
De bonis ecclesias pascunt concubinam 
continue et filios, et de pecunia ecclesias 
emunt eis possessiones. . . . Multi 
presbyteri et alii constituti in sacris, 
maxime in Hispania, in Asturia et 
Gallicia et alibi, et publice et aliquoties 
per publicum instrumentum promit- 



tunt et jurant quibusdam, maxime 
nobilibus mulieribus, numquam eas 
dimittere ; et dant eis arras de bonis 
ecclesias et possessiones ecclesias, publice 
eas ducunt, cum consanguineis et amicis 
et solenni convivio, acsi essent uxores 
legitimes. — Alv. Pelag. de Planctu Ec- 
clesias Lib. ii. Art. xxviii. (Ed. 1517 
fol. 131-3). 

This forms part of a list of fifty-four 
charges brought by Pelayo against the 
clergy of his time — "peccant in his 
communiter. ' ' If the good bishop does 
not exaggerate, these ministers of Christ 
must have been a fearful curse to the 
communities over which they presided 
in the name of the Saviour. 



312 SPAIN. 

that the canons of Valladolid remained unobserved, and in repeating 
them it added a penalty of incarceration for pertinacious offenders, 
indicating, moreover, one of the worst abuses to which the subject 
gave rise, in forbidding all officials to take bribes from those who 
transgressed the rules. 1 This effort was as fruitless as all previous 
ones had been, and we shall see hereafter that the same state of 
affairs continued until the sixteenth century was well advanced. 



1 Concil. Dertusan. ann. 1429 can. ii. (Aguirre V. 335-6). 



XX. 
GENERAL LEGISLATION. 



In a former section we have seen the efforts made by Calixtus II. 
to enforce the received discipline of the church, and we have noted 
the scanty measure of success which attended his labors. He appar- 
ently himself recognized that they were futile, and that some action 
of more decided character than had as yet been attempted was neces- 
sary to accomplish the result so long and so energetically sought, 
and so illusory to its ardent pursuers. On his return to Italy, and 
his triumph over his unfortunate rival, the anti-pope Martin Burdino, 
he summoned, in 1123, the first general council of the West, to con- 
firm the Concordat of Worms, which had just closed half a century 
of strife between the papacy and the empire. Nearly a thousand 
prelates obeyed his call, and that august assembly promulgated a 
canon which not only forbade matrimony to those bound by vows 
and holy orders, but commanded that if such marriages were con- 
tracted they should be broken, and the parties to them subjected to 
due penance. 1 

This was a bold innovation. With the exception of a decretal of 
Urban II. in 1090, to which little attention seems to have been paid, 
we have seen that, previous to Calixtus, while the sacrament of mar- 
riage was held incompatible with the ministry of the altar and with 
the enjoyment of church property, it yet was respected and its bind- 
ing force was admitted, even to the point of rendering those who 
assumed it unfitted for their sacred functions. At most, and as a 
concession to a lax and irreligious generation, the option was allowed 
of abandoning either the wife or the church. At Rheims, Calixtus 
had deprived them of this choice, and had ordered their separation 
from their wives. He now went a step further, and by the Lateran 



1 Presbyteris, diaconibus, subdiaco- 
nibus et monachis concubinas habere, 
seu matrimonia contrahere, penitus 
interdicimus : contracta quoque matri- 



monia ab hujusmodi personis disjungi, 
et personas ad pcenitentiam redigi, 
juxta sacrorum canonum diffinitiones 
judicamus. — Concil. Lateran. I. c. 21. 



314 



GENEKAL LEGISLATION 



canon he declared the sacrament of marriage to be less potent than 
the religious vow : the engagement with the church swallowed up 
and destroyed all other ties. This gave the final seal to the separa- 
tion between the clergy and the laity, by declaring the priestly char- 
acter to be indelible. When once admitted to orders, he became a 
being set apart from his fellows, consecrated to the service of God ; 
and the impassable gulf between him and the laity bound him forever 
to the exclusive interests of the church. It is easy to perceive how 
important an element this irrevocable nature of sacerdotalism became 
in establishing and consolidating the ecclesiastical power. 

The immensity of the change thus wrought in the practice, if not 
in the doctrine, of the church can best be understood by comparing 
the formal command thus issued to the Christian world with the 
unqualified condemnation pronounced in earlier times against those 
who attempted to dissolve marriage under religious pretexts. 1 And 
in all ages the church has regarded the chastity of the monastic 
orders as even more imperative than that of the secular clergy. 

Revolutions never go backwards. Perhaps the Lateran fathers 
who adopted the canon scarcely realized its logical conclusions. 
If they did, they at all events shrank from expressing them openly 
and fully, and left the faithful to draw their own deductions as to 
the causes and consequences of such an order. Time, however, 
familiarized the minds of ardent churchmen with the idea, and it was 
seen that if the practice thus enjoined was correct, doctrine must be 
made to suit and to justify it. To this end an additional stimulus 
was afforded by the failure of the canon to accomplish the results 
anticipated from it, for the custom of sacerdotal marriage was as yet 
by no means eradicated. The council of Liege, held by Innocent 
II. in 1131, referred to in a preceding section, and those of Clermont 
and Hheims, over which he likewise presided, in 1130 and 1131, 
show how little had been accomplished, and how generally the clergy 
of Europe disregarded the restrictions nominally imposed upon them, 
and the punishments which they so easily escaped. 2 In the canons 



1 Thus Gregory the Great, in 602: 
"Si enim dicunt religionis causa con- 
jugia debere dissolvi sciendum est 
quia etsi hoc lex humana concessit, 
divina lex tamen prohibuit." — Gregor. 
I. Lib. xi. Epist. 45. 

And St. Augustin : ' { Proinde qui 
dicunt talium nuptias non esse nuptias 
sed potius adulteria non mihi videntur 
satis acute ac diligenter considerare 



quid dicant . . . et cum volunt eas 
separatas reddere continentise faciunt 
maritos earum adulteros veros etc." — 
De Bono Yiduit. c. 10. 

2 Decrevimus ut ii qui a subdiaco- 
natu et supra uxores duxerint, aut 
concubinas habuerint, officio atque 
beneficio ecclesiastico careant. — Con- 
cil. Claromont. ann. 1130 can. 4. 



HESITATION IN ADMITTING THE NEW RULE. 315 

of these councils not only is it observable that the question of mar- 
riage and celibacy is treated as though it were a matter now for the 
first time brought to the attention of the clergy, but also that the 
innovation attempted by the council of Lateran, only seven or eight 
years previous, is prudently suppressed and passed over without 
even an allusion. 



Innocent, restored to Rome and to power, was bolder than when 
wandering through Europe, soliciting the aid of the faithful. Sur- 
rounded by a thousand bishops at the second great council of Lateran, 
in 1139, he no longer dreaded to offend the susceptibilities of the 
clergy, and he proceeded to justify the canon of 1123 by creating a 
doctrine to suit the practice there enjoined. After repeating the 
canons of Clermont and Rheims, he unhesitatingly pronounced that 
a union contracted in opposition to the rule of the church was not a 
marriage. 1 He draws no argument from the conflict of sacraments 
assumed to be incompatible ; a simple vow dissolves the sacrament 
of marriage, and renders it null and void — or rather destroys its 
efficacy and anticipates its existence. 

The abounding wickedness of a perverse generation caused this 
decree of the loftiest Christian tribunal to fall still-born and abortive 
as its forerunners had done. 2 The church, however, was irrevocably 
committed to the new doctrine and to all its consequences. When 
Eugenius III. was driven out of Rome by Arnold of Brescia, he 
presided, in 1148, over a council held at Rheims, where eleven 
hundred bishops and abbots from Northern and Western Europe 
assembled to do honor to the persecuted representative of St. Peter, 
and to condemn the teachings of Gilbert de la Porree. From this 



This is repeated verbatim in the 
council of Kheims in 1131, canon 4. 

Concerning the latter a contempo- 
rary observes : " Placuit etiam domino 
apostolico et toti concilio, ne quis au- 
diat missam presbyteri habentis con- 
cubinam vel uxorem. Assensu etiam 
omnium firmatum est ut clerici omnes 
a subdiacono et supra continentes sint, 
et qui non fuerint continentes, depo- 
nantur." — Udalr. Babenb. Cod. Lib. 
II. c. 1. 

1 Ut autem lex continentiaa et Deo 
placens munditia in ecclesiasticis per- 
sonis et sacris ordinibus dilatetur, 
statuimus quatenus episcopi, presby- 



teri, diaconi, subdiaconi, regulares 
canonici et monachi atque conversi 
professi, qui sanctum transgredientes 
propositum uxores sibi copulare prse- 
sumpserint, separentur. Hujusmodi 
namque copulationem, quam contra 
ecclesiasticam regulam constat esse 
contractam, matrimonium non esse 
censemus. Qui etiam ab invicem sepa- 
rati, pro tantis excessibus condignam 
poenitentiam agant. — Concil. Lateran. 
II. ann. 1139 c. 7. 

2 Sed nimis abundans per universum 
orbem nequitia terrigenarum corda con- 
tra ecclesiastica scita obduravit. — Or- 
deric. Vital. P. ill. Lib. xiii. c. 20. 



316 



GENEKAL LEGISLATION. 



great assembly he procured the confirmation of the new dogma by 
their adoption of the Lateran canon ; while the repetition of that of 
Clermont and Rheims (of 1130 and 1131) shows that the evil which 
it was intended to repress still existed in full force. 1 The vague 
assertion of Eugenius that he was but following in the footsteps of 
the holy fathers, and a special reference to Innocent II. as his 
authority, render it probable that the members of the council 
demurred in committing themselves to the new principle, and that it 
was only by showing that the matter was already decided under the 
irrefragable authority of a general council that the consent of the 
Transalpine churches was obtained. 

St. Bernard himself, the impersonation of ascetic sacerdotalism, 
hesitated to subscribe to the new dogma, and when the monks of 
Chartres asked him to reconcile it with the teachings of Augustin 
and Gregory the Great he candidly confessed that his dialectical skill 
was unequal to the task. 2 So when an abbot applied to him for ad- 
vice in the case of one of his monks, who had left the convent and 
married, St. Bernard stigmatized the act as highly improper, but 
hesitated to pronounce it unlawful. He recommended that an attempt 
be made to convince the parties that they were perilling their salva- 
tion, and if this failed he thought that perhaps they might be sepa- 
rated by episcopal authority. 3 In fact, four years after the council of 
Rheims, St. Bernard reproached Eugenius with having caused the 
adoption of canons which no one pretended to obey. If he thought 
that they were enforced, he grievously erred ; if he did not think so, 
he had sinned either by decreeing what was not to be observed or in 
neglecting to punish their non-observance — and no one was punished 
for his disobedience. 4 

Even in Rome itself the point was still disputed. At that very 
time Gratian, the greatest canonist of the age, was engaged in the 
compilation of his "Concordia discordantium Canonum," a work 



1 Concil. Kemens. ann. 1148 can. 3, 8. 
"Sanctorum patrum et prasdecessoris 
nostri Papae Innocentii vestigia inhse- 
rentes, statuimus quatenus episcopi, 
presbyteri, diaconi, etc." 

3 Et ad hsec nihil ad prsesens certius 
breviusque respondendum occurrit, nisi 
quod ita sancti antistites sapuerunt : 
rectene? ipsi viderint. — Lib. de Prse- 
cept. et Dispensat. cap. xvn. — Abelard 
contrasts the contradictory canons of 



the church in these matters in his Sic et 
Non cap. cxxn. It was possibly among 
other motives the skilful unveiling of 
ecclesiastical inconsistencies in this 
curious work that led the authorities of 
the church to procure the compilation 
of Gratian 's "Decretum." 



3 Bernardi Epist. lxxvi. 

4 Ejusd. de Considerat. Lib. 
cap. v. 



in. 



THE NEW DOGMA CONTROVERTED 



317 



undertaken at the request of the papal curia to restore to the canon 
law the preeminence which it was fast losing in consequence of the 
recently revived study of the Justinian jurisprudence. Published in 
1151 under the auspices of Eugenius himself, and presented to the 
world as the authoritative exposition of the laws and discipline of 
the church, it was everywhere received with acclamation, and has 
remained to this day the foundation of the canon law. Yet Gratian 
himself, in this work without appeal, distinctly declares his oppo- 
sition to the doctrine of Innocent and Eugenius, asserting that a 
deacon can lawfully marry if he chooses to abandon the ministry, 
and that the sacrament of marriage is so potent that no antecedent 
vow can render it void. 1 

The new law was long in winning its way to general respect, nor 
can it be a subject of wonder if those who disregarded the acknowl- 
edged canons of the church by marrying in orders, or by permitting 
such marriages in those under their charge, should neglect a rule of 
recent origin and of more than doubtful propriety. The church, 
however, was committed to it, and, moreover, could see in its eventual 
recognition a more effectual means of accomplishing the long desired 
object than in any expedient previously tried. By destroying all 
such marriages, pronouncing them null and void, inflicting an inef- 
faceable stigma on wife and offspring, subjecting the woman to the 
certainty of being cast off without resource and without option on 
the part of the husband, the position of the wife of an ecclesiastic 
would become most unenviable ; her kindred would prevent her from 
exposing herself to such calamities, and no priest could succeed in 
finding a consort above the lowest class, whose union with him would 
expose him to the contempt of his flock. 

How slender was the immediate result of the efforts of Innocent 
and Eugenius, however, is manifested by the allusions of Geroch, 
Provost of Reichersperg, who, writing about the middle of the cen- 



1 Si vero diaconus a ministerio ces- 
sare voluerit, et contracto matrimonio 
licite potest uti. Nam etsi in ordina- 
tione sua castitatis votum obtulerit, 
tamen tanta est vis in sacramento 
conjugii, quod nee ex violatione voti 
potest dissolvi ipsum conjugium. — 
Comment, in Can. i. Dist. xxvu. 

The introduction of the doctrine of 
Innocent and Eugenius into the church 
has given rise to some controversy. In 
the Encyclical of Aug. 22, 1851, and 



in the Syllabus of Dec. 1864, Pius IX. 
has condemned the error of attributing 
it to Boniface VIII. Some zealously 
orthodox writers have endeavored to 
prove that the church consistently 
maintained this doctrine from the be- 
ginning, but the contrary is admitted 
by the greater number of Catholic au- 
thorities. Cf. Zaccaria, Storia Polem- 
ica, p. 
Criminalis Canonica cap. 74. 



318 



GENERAL LEGISLATION 



tury, complains that any one who would shun intercourse with 
Nicolitan and smioniacal heretics must quit the world, for it was full 
of them, and he maintains the propriety of calling them heretics 
because they openly defended and justified their evil courses. 1 
Indeed, so shamelessly were their transgressions displayed, that the 
faithful were sometimes scandalized by the sight of the priests' wives 
assisting their husbands in the ministry of the altar; 2 while con- 
ventual discipline had sunk so low that nuns were in the habit of 
deferring their formal vows until the lassitude of old age should 
render the restraints thereby assumed easy to be endured, 3 and 
canons led a life which was only distinguishable from that of the 
laity by its shamelessness. 4 Nor was this confined to Germany. In 
France, Hugh, Archbishop of Rouen, complains that those who 
married in orders openly defended their evil practices and quoted 
Scripture to sustain themselves. 5 

In England, as seen in a preceding section, the new theory of 
Innocent and Eugenius remained a dead letter. Indeed, as late as 
1470 Sir John Fortescue incidentally alludes to a recent case in 
which a priest named John Fringe, who had lived in orders for three 
years, procured two false witnesses to swear that he had previously 
been betrothed to a certain maiden, and this preliminary promise of 
marriage was held by court to supersede his priestly ordination; he 
was ejected from the priesthood and compelled to marry the girl, with 
whom he lived fourteen years, until he was executed for treason 
by the Lancastrians during the wars of the Roses. 6 In Spain, as 
we have already seen, priestly marriage was forbidden by the secular 
law as late as the latter half of the thirteenth century, and priests in 



1 Gerhohi Tract, adv. Simoniac. c. 2. 
— About the year 1140, we find St. 
Bernard (Epist. 203) writing to the 
bishop and clergy of Treves, urging 
them to labor for the reformation of a 
married subdeacon of their church, 
in terms which show that no severe 
application of the canons was to be 
expected. 

2 Gerhohi Exposit. in Psalm lxiv. 
cap. xlix. 

3 Gerhohi Exposit. in Psalm lxiv. 
c. xxxv. An allusion in this passage 
to Eugenius III. and the council of 
Kheims shows that it was written be- 
tween 1148 and 1153. It seems that 
the nuns rebelled against the canon 



(Concil. Eemens. ann. 1148 can. iv.) 
confining them to their convents 
under threat of deprivation of Chris- 
tian sepulture. 

4 Ibid. cap. xlvi. 

5 Hugon. Eothomag. contra Hasret. 
Lib. in. cap. v. — Hugh gives us in a 
new form the old calculation as to the 
comparative merits of virginity, conti- 
nence, and marriage — " Non centesimo 
honore cum virginibus gloriatur, non 
sexagesima continentiaa palma lsetatur, 
sed tricesimo conjugii labore fatigatur." 

6 Fortescue de Laud. Leg. Angl. cap. 
xxi. — Fortescue speaks of the case as 
having occurred within his own knowl- 
edge. 



ALEXANDER III 



319 



consequence were wont to protect their partners by entering into 
the most solemn compacts, the customary employment of which 
shows that they must have been habitually enforced by the municipal 
tribunals regardless of the censures of the church. 

The long pontificate of Alexander III., extending from 1159 to 
1181, was absorbed for the most part by his deadly strife with Fred- 
eric Barbarossa. Yet, even before he was released from that ever- 
present danger, he found leisure to urge the cause of sacerdotal 
celibacy; and after the humiliation of his mortal enemy he devoted 
himself to it with a zeal which earned for him among his contempo- 
raries the credit of establishing its observance. 1 He who, as the 
legate Roland, had nearly paid, under the avenging sword of Otho 
of Wittelsbach, the forfeit of his life for his rude boldness at the 
imperial court, was little likely to abate one jot of the claims which 
the church asserted on the obedience of layman and clerk ; and he 
recognized too fully the potency of the canons of Lateran and 
Rheims not to insist upon their observance. The very necessity under 
which he found himself, however, of repeating those canons shows 
how utterly neglected they had been, and how successfully the clergy 
had thus far resisted their reception and acknowledgment. Thus 
when, in 1163, he held the council of Tours, he was obliged to con- 
tent himself with a canon which allowed three warnings to those 
who publicly kept concubines, and it was only after neglect of these 
warnings that they were threatened with deprivation of functions 
and benefice; 2 and when, in 1172, his legates presided over the 
council of Avranches, which absolved Henry II. for the murder of 
A'Becket, the Norman clergy were emphatically reminded that those 
who married in holy orders must put away their wives, and this in 
terms which indicate that the rule had not been previously obeyed. 3 



1 Et constituit ut nullus in sacris 
ordinibus habeat uxorem vel concu- 
binam. — Chron. S. JEgid. in Brunswig. 

2 Concil. Turon. ann. 1163 can. 4 
(MS. St. Michael, ap. Iiardum. Tom. 
VI. P. ii. p. 1600). 

3 Qui autem a subdiaconatu vel su- 
pra ad matrimonia convolaverint, 
mulieres etiam invitas et renitentes 
relinquant. — Concil. Abrincens. ann. 
1172 c. 1. I give this on the authority 
of the Abate Zaccaria (Nuova Giusti- 
ficazione del Celibato Sacro p. 120) ; 
there is no such canon among those 



attributed to the council by Hardouin 
(T. VI. P. ii. p. 1634), and by Bessin 
(Concil. Eotomagensia, p. 86), whose 
accounts of the proceedings are ex- 
tracted from Boger of Hoveden and 
tally with that given in the Gesta 
Henrici II. attributed to Benedict of 
Peterboro (I. 33. M. E. Series). As a 
number of canons proposed by the 
papal legates, Cardinals Theodwin and 
Albert, were rejected by the Norman 
bishops, it is possible that the local 
reports and those current at Eome may 
have differed. 



320 



GENERAL LEGISLATION". 



Yet notwithstanding this formal declaration, only a few years later 
we find the Archbishop of Rheims applying to him for counsel in 
the case of a deacon who had committed matrimony, to which Alex- 
ander of course replied that the marriage was no marriage, and that 
the offending ecclesiastic must be separated from the woman, and 
undergo due penance. 1 The persistence of the pope, and the neces- 
sity of his urgency, are farther shown by sundry epistles to various 
English bishops, in which the rule is enunciated as absolute and un- 
varying; 2 and he takes occasion to stigmatize such marriages with 
the most degrading epithet, when he graciously pardons those con- 
cerned, and permits their restitution after a long course of penitence, 
on their giving evidence of a reformed life. 3 

Yet even Alexander was forced to abate somewhat of his stern 
determination, in consideration of the incorrigible perversity of the 
time, though he seems not to have remarked that he abandoned the 
principle by admitting exceptions, and that the reasons assigned in 
such individual cases might, with equal cogency, be applied to the 
total withdrawal of the rule. When the Calabrian bishops informed 
him that clerks in holy orders throughout their dioceses committed 
matrimony, he ordered that priests and deacons should be irrevocably 
separated from their wives ; but, in the case of subdeacons of doubtful 
morals, he instructed the prelates that they should tacitly connive at 
the irregularity, lest in place of one woman, many should be abused, 
and a greater evil be incurred, in the endeavor to avoid a less. 4 This 
worldly wisdom also dictated his orders to the Bishop of Exeter, in 
whose diocese subdeacons were in the habit of openly marrying. He 
directs an examination into the lives and characters of the offenders ; 
those whose regular habits and staid morality afford fair expectation 
of their chastity in celibacy are to be forcibly separated from their 
wives ; while those whose disorderly character renders probable their 
general licentiousness if condemned to a single life are not to be dis- 
turbed — taking care, however, that they do not minister at the altar, 
or receive ecclesiastical benifices. 5 



1 Post Concil. Lateran. P. xviii. 
c. 12. 

Concil. Lateran. P. xviii. 



2 Post 
c. 2, 6. 



3 Sane sacerdotes illi, qui nuptias 
contrahunt, quae non nuptise sed con- 
tubernia sunt potius nuncupanda, 
post longam pcenitentiam et vitam 



laudabilem continentes, officio suo 
restitui poterunt, et ex indulgentia 
sui episcopi ejus exsecutionem habere. 
— Can. 4 Extra, Tit. iii. Lib. in. 



Lateran. P. xviii. 



* Post Concil. 
c. 4. 

6 Post Concil. Lateran. P. xviii. c. 
13. — In a decretal addressed to the Dean 



HEREDITAKY BENEFICES. 



321 



Alexander adopted the principle that a simple vow of chastity did 
not prevent marriage or render it null, but that a formal vow, or the 
reception of orders, created a dissolution of marriage, or a total in- 
ability to enter into it ; l but Celestin III. carried the principle still 
farther, and decreed that a simple vow, while it did not dissolve an 
existing connection, was sufficient to prevent a future one. 2 

Alexander did not confine himself to this portion of the question, 
but with ceaseless activity labored to enforce the observance of celi- 
bacy in general, and to repress the immorality which disgraced the 
church throughout Christendom — immorality which led Alain de 
l'lsle, the " Universal Doctor," to characterize the ecclesiastics of 
his time as being old men in their inefficiency and young men in 
their unbridled passions. 3 Alexander's efforts were particularly 
directed to put an end to the practice of hereditary priesthood, and 
its constant consequence, hereditary benefices. If I have made little 
allusion to this subject during the century under consideration, it is 
not that the church had relaxed her exertions to place some limit on 
this apparently incurable disorder, or that the passive resistance to 
her efforts had been less successful than we have seen it on previous 
occasions. The perpetual injunctions of Alexander show at once 
the universality of the vice, and the determination of the pontiff to 
eradicate it. At the same time it became a frequent, and no doubt 
a profitable portion of the duties of the papal chancery, to grant 
special dispensations when those who held such preferment, or who 
desired to retain their wives, underwent the dangers and expense of 
a journey to Rome, and were rewarded for their confidence in the 
benignity of the Holy Father by a rescript to their bishops, com- 
manding their reinstatement in the benefices from which they had 



and Chapter of Lincoln, Alexander 
grants permission of marriage to a cer- 
tain subdeacon, and forbids interference 
with such legitimate marriage, giving 
as a reason that the subdiaconate of the 
person referred to carried with it no pre- 
ferment. — Ibid. c. 14. 

1 Post Concil. Lateran. P. vi. c. 9. 

2 Votum simplex impedit sponsalia 
de futuro, non autem dirimit matri- 
monium sequens ; secus in voto solenni. 
—Can. 6 Extra Lib. iv. Tit. vi. 

The practical rule deduced by a 



shrewd lawyer in the latter half of the 
thirteenth century from this varying 
legislation is, "Note deus relies; que 
simple vou et sollempnie lie maeme 
quant a Deu ; et simple vou empeche a 
marier, mes il ne tost pas ce qui est fet ; 
et note que vou, de la nature de soi, ne 
depiece pas mariage, mes c'est de con- 
stitucion d ; yglise" — (Livres de Jostice 
et de Plet, Liv. x. chap. vi. \ 6). This 
is likewise the conclusion reached by 
Thomas Aquinas, Summ. Theol. Supp. 
Qusest. LIU. Art. i. ii. 

3 Alani ab Insulis Lib. Poenitentialis. 



21 



322 



GENERAL LEGISLATION. 



been ejected. 1 The power to grant such dispensations was shrewdly 
reserved as the exclusive privilege of the papal court ; 2 and a high 
churchman of the period assures us that there was no difficulty in 
obtaining them. 3 It need not, therefore, surprise us that Alexander's 
successor, Lucius III., found the hereditary transmission of the 
priestly office claimed as an absolute right. 4 And not only did the 
claims of the papal chancery thus interfere with the execution of the 
law by its power of granting dispensations, but its appellate juris- 
diction was constantly used to avert punishment from the worst of- 
fenders. Thus Lucius III., about the year 1181 was obliged to grant 
to Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris, the right to dispossess of their 
benefices and functions, without appeal, certain notorious concu- 
binarians who, on being threatened with the application of the law, 
had defied him by interposing an appeal to Rome. 5 This centraliza- 
tion of all power in the papal court, and the unblushing venality of 
the Roman officials, meet us in every age as the efficient obstacle to 
the efforts of reforming prelates throughout Europe. 

The uncertainty of this conflicting legislation, at times enforced, 
and at times dispensed with by the supreme power, led to innumer- 
able complications and endless perplexity in private life. Indeed, a 
large portion of the canons are founded on responses given by the 
popes to settle cases of peculiar difficulty arising from ignorance or 
neglect of the discipline enjoined, and many of these reveal extreme 
hardship inflicted on those who could be convicted of no intentional 
guilt. Perhaps the most noteworthy instance of the troubles caused 
by the new regulations was that of Bossaert d' Avesnes, which resulted 
in a desperate war to determine the possession of the rich provinces 
of Flanders and Hainault. As it illustrates the doubts which still 
environed these particular points, and the conflicting decisions to 
which they were liable, even from the infallibility of successive popes, 
it may be worth briefly sketching here. 



1 Post. Concil. Lateran. P. xix. c. 1, 
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10.— Can. 10, 11, 12, 
14, Extra Lib. I. Tit. xvii. 

2 Can. 17, 18, Extra Lib. I. Tit. xvii. 

3 Quia de talibus absque difficultate 
curia Eomana dispensat, quia et de 
subdiaconibus quibusdam audivimus a 
domino Papa dispensatum. — Girald. 
Cambrens. Gemm. Eccles. Dist. II. 
cap. v. 



4 Consuetudinem introductam quod 
filii eorum qui vestras ecclesias tenue- 
runt. . . . patribus . . . consecuti, sub 
reprehensibili collusione volunt ipsas 
ecclesias jure successionis habere, etc. — 
Lucii. PP. III. Epist. 88.— Cf. Concil. 
Eotomag. ann. 1189 can. vi. 



6 Chartular. Eccles. 
xx. T. I. p. 35. 



Parisiens. No. 



BOSSAERT D'AVESNES. 323 

When Baldwin of Flanders, Emperor of Constantinople, died in 
1206, his eldest daughter Jane succeeded to his territories of Flanders 
and Hainault, while his second child, Margaret, was placed under the 
guardianship of Bossaert d'Avesnes. Bossaert was a relative of her 
mother, Mary of Champagne, and though he held the comparatively 
insignificant position of chantre of Tournay, he was yet a man of 
great repute and influence. With the assent and approbation of the 
estates of Flanders, Margaret and Bossaert were married, the issue 
of the union being three sons. Whether the fact of his having 
received the subdiaconate was publicly known or not is somewhat 
doubtful ; but he seems at length to have been awakened to a sense 
of his uncertain position, when he went to Rome for the purpose of 
obtaining a dispensation and legitimating his children. Innocent III. 
not only refused the application, but commanded him to restore 
Margaret to her relatives and to do penance by a pilgrimage to the 
Holy Land. Disregarding these injunctions, he lived openly with 
his wife after his return and was excommunicated in consequence. 
At length Margaret left him and married Guillaume de Dampierre, 
while Bossaert was assassinated during a second visit to Rome, 
where he was seeking reconciliation to the church. When at last, 
in 1244, the Countess Jane closed her long and weary career by 
assuming the veil at Marquette, without leaving heirs, the children 
of Margaret by both marriages claimed the succession, and Margaret 
favored the younger, asserting, without scruple, that her elder son3 
were illegitimate. The difficult question was referred to St. Louis 
for arbitration, and in 1247 the good king assigned Flanders to 
Gui de Dampierre and Hainault to Jean d'Avesnes, thus recognizing 
both marriages as legitimate. This, of course, satisfied neither party. 
Innocent IV. was appealed to, and in 1248 he sent commissioners to 
investigate the knotty affair. They reported that the marriage of 
Bossaert had been contracted in the face of all Flanders, and that 
the d'Avesnes were legitimate, which judgment was confirmed by 
Innocent himself in 1252. Thus fortified, Jean d'Avesnes resisted 
the proposed partition, and a bloody civil war arose. The victory 
of Vacheren placed the Dampierre in the hands of their half-brothers, 
and promised to be decisive, until Margaret called in Charles de 
Valois, bribing him with the offer of Hainault to complete the dis- 
inheriting of her first-born. The war continued until Louis, re- 



324 



GENERAL LEGISLATION. 



turning from the East in 1255, compelled the combatants to lay down 
their arms, and to abide by his arbitration. 1 

In this case we see Innocent III. deciding that marriage was in- 
compatible with the subdiaconate. Yet it is a striking illustration 
of the uncertainty which still surrounded the matter to find the same 
pope, in 1208, commanding a subdeacon of Laon to return to the 
wife whom he had abandoned on taking orders, and to treat her in 
all respects as a wife. Innocent is not to be suspected of any tem- 
porizing concession to prevailing laxity, and yet in this case he 
overruled the uninterrupted tradition of the canons that married 
men taking orders should thenceforth treat their wives as sisters ; 
and the doubts which experienced ecclesiastics entertained with 
regard to the law are visible in the fact that when the wife com- 
plained of her abandonment to the metropolitan authorities at 
Kheims they did not pretend to give judgment, but sent the testi- 
mony in the case at once to Innocent for his decision. 2 

Another curious case occurring about the same time illustrates the 
complexity of the questions which arose and the manner in which 
the selfishness of ascetic zeal sometimes eluded even the very slender 
barriers with which the church limited its gratification. As we have 
seen, it was an ancient rule that no man could assume monastic 
vows without the assent of his wife, with the additional condi- 
tion that she must at the same time enter a nunnery. It ap- 
pears that a husband desiring to become a monk, and finding his 
wife obstinately opposed to his designs, enlisted the services of 
various priests to influence her, carefully concealing from her the 
obligation which her assent would impose upon her to take the veil. 
Still she obstinately refused, until at last he threatened to castrate 
himself, when she yielded and went through the ceremony of placing 
with her own hands his head on the altar. The wife thus abandoned 
took to evil courses, and the husband-monk applied in person to 
Innocent III. to learn whether he ought to remain in his order, 
seeing that his continence might be responsible for her unchastity. 
In spite of the deceit practised upon the wife, Innocent resolved his 
doubts in favor of the maintenance of his vows, giving as a reason 



1 D'Oudegherst, Annales de Flandre, 
chap. cm. — Baluz. et Mansi T. i. — 
Mirsei Diplom. Lib. I. c. 88. — Grandes 
Chroniques, T. IV. pp. 339-42.— Inno- 



cent. PP. III. Kegest. Append, ad Lib. 

XIV. 

2 Innocent. PP. III. Kegest. xi. 204. 



ABKOGATION OP CELIBACY CONSIDERED. 



325 



that her adulteries deprived her of claim on him. At the same time, 
nothing was said as to compelling the woman to take the veil. 1 

In view of these perplexities, it is no wonder that even the resolute 
spirit of Alexander III., dismayed at the arduous nature of the 
struggle, or appalled at the ineradicable vices which defied even 
papal authority, at times shrank from the contest and was ready to 
abandon the principle. If we may believe Giraldus Cambrensis, 
who, as a contemporary intimately connected with the highest 
ecclesiastical authorities in England, was not likely to be mistaken, 
and whose long sojourn at the court of Innocent III. would have 
afforded him ample opportunities of correcting a misstatement, 
Alexander had once resolved to introduce the discipline of the Greek 
church in Western Europe, permitting single marriages with virgins. 
To this he had obtained the assent of his whole court, except his 
chancellor Albert, who was afterwards pope under the name of 
Gregory VIII. The resistance of this dignitary was so powerful 
as to cause the abandonment of the project. 2 Alexander, indeed, 
was not alone in this conviction. Giraldus himself was fully con- 
vinced that such a change would be most useful to the church, 
though as archdeacon of St. David's he had displayed his zeal for 
the enforcement of the canon by measures too energetic for the de- 
generacy of the age, and though he occupies, in his "Gemma Eccle- 
siastica," twenty-one chapters with an exhortation to his clergy to 
abandon their evil courses. 3 Men of high character did not hesitate 
to take even stronger ground against the rule. The celebrated Peter 
Comestor, whose orthodoxy is unquestioned, taught publicly in his 
lectures that the devil had never inflicted so severe a blow on the 
church as in procuring the adoption of celibacy. 4 



1 Innocent. PP. III. Eegest. xn. 13. 

2 Girald. Cambrens. Gemm. Eccles. 
Dist. II. cap. vi. 

The "Gemma" was the favorite 
work of its author, who relates with 
pride the approbation specially bestowed 
upon it by Innocent III. 

3 Yet so hopeless was this well-in- 
tentioned attempt, that Giraldus is 
willing to let off his recalcitrant clergy 
with the simple restriction demanded 
of the laity — abstinence for three days 
previous to partaking of the communion. 
" Qui igitur in immunditiae veluti suo 



volutabro volvitur adhuc et versatur, 
hanc saltern altari sacro et sacrifices 
reverentiam sacerdos exhibeat, ut vel 
tribus diebus et noctibus priusquam 
corpus Christi consecrare prsesumat 
mundum . . . vas custodiat." — Ibid, 
cap. vi. 

4 Hoc autem magistrum Petrum Man- 
ducatorem in audientia totius scholaa 
su83 quge tot et tantis viris literatissimis 
referta fuit dicentem audivi, quia 
nunquam hostis ille antiquus in aliquo 
articulo, adeo ecclesiam Dei circum- 
venit, sicut in voti illius emissione. — 
Ibid. cap. vi. 



326 



GENERAL LEGISLATION 



These were but individual opinions. The policy of the church 
remained unaltered, and Alexander's successors emulated his example 
in endeavoring to enforce the canons. Clement III. took advantage 
of the profound impression which the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin 
(Oct. 1187) produced on all Europe, when the fall of the Latin 
kingdom was attributed to the sins of Christendom. He preached a 
general reformation. Abstinence from meat on Wednesdays and 
Saturdays for five years, and various other kinds of mortification 
were enjoined on all, to propitiate a justly offended Deity, but the 
clergy were the objects of special reproof. Their extreme laxity of 
morals, their neglect of the dress of their order, their worldly ambi- 
tion and pursuits, drinking, gambling, and flocking to tournaments, 
and the unclerical deportment which left little difference between 
them and the laity, were some of the accusations brought against 
them. To their incontinence, however, was chiefly attributed the 
wrath of God, besides the measureless scandals to which their 
conduct exposed the church, and they were commanded to remove 
all suspected females from their houses within forty days, under pain 
of suspension from their functions and revenues. 1 That these rebukes 
were not the mere angry declamation of an ascetic is shown by the 
declaration of Celestin III., a few years later, that throughout 
Germany the custom still prevailed of fathers substituting in their 
benefices their sons, born during priesthood, so that frequently 
parent and offspring ministered together in the same church ; 2 and 
the extent of the demoralization is evident when we find the sons of 
priests and deacons alluded to as a class ineligible to knighthood in 
a constitution of Frederic Barbarossa in 1187. 3 The regular clergy 
offered no exception to the general relaxation of discipline. In 1192 
Odo, Bishop of Toul, felt himself forced to deplore the wickedness of 
monks who left their monasteries and publicly took to themselves 
wives, but he could devise no better means of arresting the scandal 
than excommunicating them and their growing families. 4 

Yet, with all his ardor, Clement admitted that celibacy was only 
a local rule of discipline, and that there was nothing really in- 



1 Epist. Henr. Card. Albanens. 
(Ludewig, Eel. Msctor. II. 441). 

2 Baluz. et Mansi III. 380. 

8 De filiis quoque sacerdotum, dia- 
conorum, rusticorum, statuimus, ne 
cingulum militare aliquatenus assu- 



mant ; et qui jam assumpserunt, per 
judicem provinciae a militia pellantur. 
— Feudor. Lib. v. Tit. x.— Conf. Conr. 
Urspergens. ann. 1187. 

4 Statut. Synod. Odon. Tullens. cap. 
vi. (Hartzheim III. 456). 



FOURTH COUNCIL OF LATERAN. 327 

compatible between marriage and the holy functions of the altar. 
The time had not yet come when the council of Trent could 
erect the inviolable continence of the priesthood into an article 
of faith, and Clement was willing to allow that priests of the 
Greek church, under his jurisdiction, could legitimately be married 
and could celebrate mass while their families were increasing around 
them. 1 

Innocent III., who, by the fortunate conjunction of the time in 
which he flourished with his own matchless force of character, en- 
joyed perhaps the culmination of papal power and prerogative, at 
length brought to the struggle an influence and a determination 
which could scarcely fail to prove decisive on any question capable 
of a favorable solution. By his decretals and his legates he labored 
assiduously to enforce obedience to the canons, and when, in 1215, 
he summoned the whole Christian world to meet in the fourth council 
of Lateran, that august assembly of about thirteen hundred prelates, 
acting under his impulsion, and reflecting his triumph over John of 
England and Otho of Germany, spoke with an authority which no 
former body since that of Nicsea had possessed. Its canons on the 
subject before us were simple, perhaps less violent in their tone than 
those of former synods, but they breathed the air of conscious 
strength, and there was no man that dared openly to gainsay them. 
A more rigid observance of the rules was enjoined, and any one 
officiating while suspended for contravention was punishable with 
perpetual degradation and deprivation of his emoluments. Yet the 
rule was admitted to be merely a local ordinance peculiar to the 
Latin church, for, in the effort made by the council to heal the 
schism with Constantinople, the right of the East to permit the 
marriage of its priests was acknowledged by a clause visiting with 
severer penalties those who by custom were allowed to marry, and 
who, notwithstanding this license, still permitted themselves illicit 
indulgences. The disgraceful traffic by which in some places pre- 
lates regularly sold permissions to sin was denounced in the strong- 
est terms, as a vice equal in degree to that which it encouraged; 
and the common custom of fathers obtaining preferment in their 



1 Can. 7 Extra Lib. v. Tit. xxxviii. 



328 



GSNEKAL LEGISLATION. 



own churches for their illegitimate offspring was reprobated as it 
deserved. 1 

There is nothing novel in these canons, nor can they in strictness 
be said to constitute an epoch in the history of sacerdotal celibacy. 
They enunciate no new principles, they threaten no new punishments, 
yet are they noteworthy as marking the settled policy of the church 
at a period when it had acquired that plenitude of power and vigor 
of organization which insured at least an outward show of obedience 
to its commands. The successive labors of so long a series of pon- 
tiffs, during more than a century and a half, carrying with them the 
cumulative authority of Rome, had gradually broken down resistance, 
and the Lateran canons were the definitive expression of its discipline 
on this subject. Accordingly, though we shall see how little was 
accomplished in securing the purity of the priesthood, which was the 
ostensible object of the rule, yet hereafter there are to be found few 
traces of marriage in holy orders, except in the distant countries to 
which reference has already been made. 

Yet the readiness to relax the rule when a substantial advantage 
was to be gained still continued, and when the effort, commenced at 
the council of Lyons in 1274, to reunite the Greek church under the 
supremacy of the Holy See was apparently successful, Nicholas III. 
stoutly insisted upon the addition of "filioque" to the Symbol, but 
was discreetly silent as to separating the wives of priests from their 
husbands, promising in general terms that in all that merely con- 
cerned ritual observances the way should be made easy for them. 2 

In Southern Italy, when the churches were actually brought 
together under the domination of Rome, priests of Greek origin 



1 IsTe vero facilitas veniae incentivum 
tribuat delinquendi : statuimus, ut qui 
deprehensi fuerint incontinentiae vitio 
laborare, prout magis aut minus pecca- 
verint, puniantur secundum canonicas 
sanctiones, quas efficacius et districtius 
prsecipimus observari, ut quos divinus 
timor a malo non revocat, temporalis 
saltern poena a peccato cohibeat. 

Si quis igitur hac de causa suspensus, 
divina celebrare prsesumpserit, non so- 
lum ecclesiasticis beneficiis spolietur, 
verum etiam pro hac duplici culpa, 
perpetuo deponatur. 

Prselati vero qui tales prsesumpserint 
in suis iniquitatibus sustinere, maxime 



obtentu pecuniae vel alterius commodi 
temporalis, pari subjaceant ultioni. 

Qui autem secundum regionis suss 
morem non abdicarunt copulam con- 
jugalem, si lapsi fuerint, gravius puni- 
antur, cum legitimo matrimonio possint 
uti. — Concil, Lateranens. TV. can. 14. 

Ad abolendam pessiman, quae in 
plerisque inolevit ecclesiis, corrupte- 
lam, firmiter prohibemus, ne canoni- 
corum filii, maxime spurii, canonici 
fiant in saacularibus ecclesiis, in quibus 
instituti suntpatres etc. — Ibid. can. 31. 

2 See his instructions to his legates, 
cap. xi. (Martene Ampl. Collect. VII. 

267-74). 



THE GRJECO-LATIN CHURCH. 329 

were allowed to retain their wives, but married clerks of Latin 
parentage were not permitted to enter holy orders without separation. 
It not infrequently happened that the latter endeavored to elude the 
prohibition by getting themselves ordained in the Greek church, and 
it became necessary to denounce severe penalties not only against 
them, but against the prelates who permitted it. 1 



1 Concil. Melfitan. aim. 1284 c. iii. (Ibid p. 284). 



XXL 

RESULTS. 



The unrelaxing efforts of two centuries had at length achieved an 
inevitable triumph. One by one the different churches of Latin 
Christendom yielded to the fiat of the successor of St. Peter, and 
their ecclesiastics were forced to forego the privilege of assuming 
the most sacred of earthly ties with the sanction of heaven and the 
approbation of man. Sacerdotalism vindicated its claim to exclusive 
obedience; the church successfully asserted its right to command 
the entire life of its members, and to sunder all the bonds that might 
allure them to render a divided allegiance. In theory, at least, all 
who professed a religious life or assumed the sacred ministry were 
given up wholly to the awful service which they had undertaken: 
no selfishly personal aspirations could divert their energies from the 
aggrandizement of their class, nor were the temporal possessions of 
the establishment to be exposed to the minute but all-pervading 
dilapidation of the wife and family. 

If these were the objects of the movement inaugurated by Damiani 
and Hildebrand, and followed up with such unrelenting vigor by 
Calixtus and Alexander and Innocent, the history of the mediaeval 
church attests how fully they were attained. It is somewhat in- 
structive, indeed, to observe that in the rise of the papal power to its 
culmination under Innocent III. it was precisely the pontiffs most 
conspicuous for their enforcement of the rule of celibacy who were 
likewise most prominent in their assertion of the supremacy, tem- 
poral and spiritual, of the head of the Roman church. Whether or 
not they recognized and acknowledged the connection, they labored 
as though the end in view was clearly appreciated, and their triumphs 
on the one field were sure to be followed by corresponding successes 
on the other. 

Yet in all this the ostensible object was always represented to be 



DANGEKS UNHEEDED. 



331 



the purity of the church and of its ministers. The other advantages 
were either systematically ignored or but casually alluded to. One 
warning voice, indeed, was raised, in a quarter where it would have 
at least commanded respectful attention, had not the church appeared 
to imagine itself superior to the ordinary laws of cause and effect. 
While Innocent II. was laboring to enforce his new doctrine that 
ordination and religious vows were destructive of marriage, St. 
Bernard, the ascetic reformer of monachism and the foremost eccle- 
siastic of his day, was thundering against the revival of Manichseism. 
The heresies of the Albigenses respecting marriage were to be com- 
bated, and, in performing this duty, he pointed out with startling 
vigor the evils to the church and to mankind of the attempt to enforce 
a purity incompatible with human nature. Deprive the church of 
honorable marriage, he exclaimed, and you fill her with concubinage, 
incest, and all manner of nameless vice and uncleanness. 1 It was 
still an age of faith ; and while earnest men like St. Bernard could 
readily anticipate the evils attendant upon the asceticism of heretics, 
they could yet persuade themselves, as the Council of Trent subse- 
quently expressed it, that God would not deny the gift of chastity to 
those who rightly sought it in the bosom of the true church — though 
St. Bernard himself confessed that crimes which he dared not even 
to name commonly followed after the fornication, adultery, and incest 
which specially characterized innumerable ministers of Christ. 2 It 
remains for us to see what was the success of the attempt thus 
deliberately to tempt the Lord. 

It is somewhat significant that when, in France, the rule of celibacy 
was completely restored, strict churchmen should have found it neces- 
sary also to revive the hideously suggestive restriction which denied 
to the priest the society of his mother or of his sister. Even in the 
profoundest barbarism of the tenth century, or the unbridled license 
of the eleventh ; even when Damiani descanted upon the disorders of 
his contemporaries with all the cynicism of the most exalted asceticism, 
horrors such as these are not alluded to. It is reserved for the ad- 
vancement of the thirteenth century and the enforcement of celibacy 
to show us how outraged human nature may revenge itself and protest 



1 Tolle de ecclesia honorabile connu- 
bium et torum immaculatum ; nonne 
reples earn concubinariis, incestuosis, 
seminifluis, mollibus, masculorum con- 
cubitoribus et omni denique genere im- 
mundorum? — Bernardi Serm. lxvi. in 



Cantic. $ 3. — This series is understood 
to have "been written in 1135. 



2 Bernardi Serm. 
cap. xx. 



de Conversion e 



332 



RESULTS. 



against the shackles imposed by zealous sacerdotalism or unreasoning 
bigotry. In 1208, Cardinal Guala, Innocent's legate in France, 
issued an order in which he not only repeated the threadbare pro- 
hibitions respecting focarise and concubines, but commanded that 
even mothers and other relatives should not be allowed to reside 
with men in holy orders, the devil being the convenient personage on 
whom, as usual, was thrown the responsibility of the scandals which 
were known to occur frequently under such circumstances. 1 That 
this decree was not allowed to pass into speedy oblivion is shown by a 
reference to it as still well known and in force a century later, in the 
statutes of the church of Treguier. 2 And that the necessity for it 
was not evanescent may be assumed from its repetition in the regu- 
lations of the see of Nismes, the date of which is uncertain, but 
probably attributable to the close of the fourteenth century. 3 At the 
same time, we have evidence that Cardinal Guala's efforts were pro- 
ductive of little effect. Four years later, in 1212, we find Innocent 
formally authorizing the prelates of France mercifully to pardon 
those who had been excommunicated under Guala's rules, with the 
suggestive proviso that the power thus conferred was not to be used 
for the purpose of extorting unhallowed gains. 4 Still more significant 
is the fact that in the same year Innocent dispatched another legate, 
Cardinal Robert, duly commissioned to renew the endless task of 
purifying the Gallican church. Guala's efforts would seem to have 
already passed into oblivion, for in a council which Cardinal Robert 
held in Paris, he gravely promulgated a canon forbidding the priest- 
hood from keeping their concubines so openly as to give rise to 
scandal, and threatening the recalcitrants with excommunication if 
they should persist in retaining their improper consorts for forty 
days after receiving notice. 5 That monachism was no less productive 
of sin in the depraved moral atmosphere of the age is rendered 
evident by other canons of the same council, which prohibit both 
monks and nuns from sleeping two in a bed, with the avowed object 



1 Constit. Gallonis cap. (Harduin. I. 
T. VI. P. II. p. 1975).— Giraldus Cam- 
brensis, a few years earlier, makes the 
same assertion (Gemma. Eccles. Dist. 
II. cap. xv.). 

2 Statut. Eccles. Trecorens. c. 32 
(Martene Thesaur. IV. 1102). Cf. 



Synod. Andegavens. ann. 1312 cap. 1. 
(D'Achery I. 742). 

3 Statut. Eccles. Nemausens. Tit. vn. 
c. 5 (Martene Thesaur. IV. 1044). 

4 Innocent. PP. III. Kegest. Lib. 
xv. Epist. 113. 

5 Concil. Parisiens. ann. 1212 can. 
4 (Harduin. T. VI. P. n. p. 2001). 



FKUITLESS EFFOKTS. 333 

of repressing crimes against nature. 1 It may well be asked what 
was the value of the continence aimed at in monastic vows when the 
whole body of the monastic orders was the subject of such degrading 
regulations as these. 

The clergy of France were not exceptional, and, unfortunately, 
there can be no denial of the fact that notorious and undisguised 
illicit unions, or still more debasing secret licentiousness, was a uni- 
versal and pervading vice of the church throughout Christendom. 
Its traces amid all the ecclesiastical legislation of the thirteenth, 
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries are too broad and deep to be 
called into question, and if no evidence remained except the constant 
and unavailing efforts to repress it, that alone would be sufficient. 
National and local synods, pastoral epistles, statutes of churches, all 
the records of ecclesiastical discipline are full of it. Now deploring 
and now threatening, exhausting ingenuity in devising new regula- 
tions and more effective punishments, the prelates of those ages found 
themselves involved in a task as endless and as bootless as that of 
the Danaidge. Occasionally, indeed, it is lost sight of momentarily, 
when the exactions and usurpations of the laity, or the gradual 
extension of secular jurisdiction monopolized the attention of those 
who were bound to defend the privileges of their class ; but, with 
these rare exceptions, it may be asserted as a general truth that 
scarcely a synod met, or a body of laws was drawn up to govern 
some local church, in which the subject did not receive a prominent 
position and careful consideration. It would be wearisome and un- 
profitable to recapitulate here the details of this fruitless iteration. 
Without by any means exhausting the almost limitless materials for 
investigation, I have collected a formidable mass of references upon 
the subject, but an examination of them shows so little of novelty 
and so constant a recurrence to the starting-point, that no new prin- 
ciples can be evolved from them, and their only interest lies in their 
universality, and in demonstrating how resultless was the unceasing 
effort to remove the uneffaceable plague-spot. 

Spasmodic efforts, it is true, occasionally wrought a temporary im- 
provement, as when Alexander IV., in 1259, proclaimed to the world 
that licentious ecclesiastics were the cause of all the evils under 
which the church was groaning, for through them the name of God 
was blasphemed throughout the world, the sacraments were polluted, 



1 Ibid. P. ii. c. 21, P. in. c. 2 (Harduin. VI. n. 2009, 2011; 



334 



RESULTS. 



the Catholic religion lost the reverence of the faithful, the people 
were deprived of the benefits of divine service, the substance of the 
church was dissipated, the Word of God was defiled by their impure 
lips, heretics were encouraged in their opposition, oppressors were 
emboldened to persecution, and the sacrilegious were able to expose 
the whole church to mockery and contempt. To alleviate these 
troubles, he not only ordered the prelates of Christendom to prose- 
cute all offences of this nature with the utmost severity, but, recog- 
nizing his own court as an obstacle to reform, he surrendered his 
appellate jurisdiction in such cases, and forbade all appeals to Rome. 1 
His earnestness bore some fruit, and many prelates were stimulated 
to reform their flocks, causing large numbers of ecclesiastics to be 
expelled. A contemporary rhymester, Adam de la Halle (better 
known perhaps as Le Bossu d' Arras), thus alludes to the effects of 
the Bull :— 

" Et chascuns le pape encosa 
Quant tant de bons clers desposa. — 
— Komme a bien le tiercbe partie 
Des clers fais sers et amatis." 2 

As in all similar attempts, however, the results were but transitory. 
Ferry, Bishop of Orleans, would scarce have been murdered, in 
1299, by a knight whose daughter he had seduced, had the father 
felt that there was any chance of punishing the criminal by having 
the canons enforced against him. 3 

In the confessed nullity of penal legislation it was natural for the 
church to have recourse to her supernatural armory, and accordingly 
we have ample store of legends framed with the hope of frightening 
by spiritual terrors those who were indurated to canon and decretal. 
The dead concubine of a priest was seen chased by infernal demons, 
and a knight who sought to protect her had a handful of hair left in 
his grasp by her mad terror ; and the reality of the awful scene was 
verified on opening her tomb and finding her tresses deficient. So 
a nun who had yielded to temptation and had sought to conceal her 
frailty by murdering her child, dying unconfessed, was seen wander- 
ing hopelessly with a burning infant clasped to her bosom, which she 
proclaimed was to be her torment throughout eternity. 4 It is no 



1 Chron. Augustens. ann. 1260 (Fre- 
her. et Struv. I. 546-7). 

2 Michel, Theat. Fran?, au Moyen 
Age, p. 23. 



3 Guillel. de Nangis ann. 1299. 

4 Caesar. Heisterbach. Dial. Mirac. 
Dist. xn. c. xx. xxi. 



CHILDKEN OF ECCLESIASTICS. 335 

wonder that the well-meant ingenuity which devised these tales met 
with slender reward, and that the threat of post-mortem punishment 
was as powerless as that of temporal penalties, for these tales were 
counterbalanced by other superstitions, such as that which taught 
that the most sinful, even among laymen, could obtain eternal salva- 
tion by the simple expedient of enveloping himself in a monastic 
habit on his death-bed. The Benedictines had well-authenticated 
cases in plenty where the most vicious of men, by adopting this 
plan, were rescued by St. Benedict himself from the hands of 
demons conducting them to eternal punishment, in spite of Satan's 
complaints that he was defrauded of his rights. 1 The Franciscans 
contended with the Benedictines as to the efficacy of their respective 
patrons, and related with pride that St. Francis visited purgatory 
every year and carried with him to heaven the souls of his followers 
— a general plan of salvation which gave his vestments a decided 
superiority over those of the older order. As the practice became 
more common, it was recognized as equally dangerous to the welfare 
of the faithful and to the revenues of the church, and was condemned 
as a pernicious error. 2 

So open and avowed was the shame of the church that the 
Neapolitan code, promulgated about 1231 by the enlightened Frederic 
II., absolutely interfered to give a quasi legitimacy to the children 
of ecclesiastics, and removed, to a certain extent, their disability of 
inheritance. The imperial officials were ordered to assign appro- 
priate shares in parental estates to such children, notwithstanding 
their illegitimacy, conditioned on the payment of an annual tax to 
the imperial court ; and parents were not allowed to alienate their 
property to the prejudice of such children, any more than in cases 
of the offspring of lawful wedlock. 3 The numbers and influence of 
the class thus protected must indeed have been great to induce such 
interference in their favor. 



1 Chron. Casinens. Lib. in. cap. 
xxxix. 

2 Concil. Hammaburg. ann. 1406 
(Hartzheim VI. 2). 

3 Constit Sicular. Lib. III. Tit. 25 
c. 1. 

It is possible that Frederick's legis- 
lation may have attracted attention 



to the irregularities of the Neapolitan 
church, for in 1230 Gregory IX. ad- 
dressed an encyclical letter to the 
prelates of that kingdom " praesertim 
super cohabitatione mulierum;" and 
two years later he deemed it neces- 
sary to repeat his admonitions. — 
Kaynaldi Annal. ann. 1230 No. 20. 



336 



EESULTS 



We have already seen ecclesiastical authority for the assertion 
that in the Spanish Peninsula the children sprung from such illicit 
connections rivalled in numbers the offspring of the laity. That they 
were numerous elsewhere may be presumed when we see Innocent 
IV., in 1248, forced to grant to the province of Livonia the privilege 
of having them eligible to holy orders, except when born of parents 
involved in monastic vows, 1 for necessity alone could excuse so fla- 
grant a departure from the canons enunciated during the preceding 
two centuries. A similar conclusion is deducible from the fact that 
in the municipal code in force throughout Northern Germany during 
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they were deemed of sufficient 
importance to be entitled to a separate place in the classification of 
wer-gilds, or blood-moneys ; while the aim of the lawgiver to stigma- 
tize them is manifested by his placing them below the peasant, deem- 
ing them superior only to the juggler; 2 and that this was not a 
provision of transient force is clear from the commentary upon it in 
a body of law dating from the end of the fourteenth century. 3 Nor 
is the evidence less convincing which may be drawn from the use of 
the old German word pfaffenkind, or priest's son, which became gen- 
erally used as equivalent to bastard. 4 It would not, indeed, be diffi- 
cult to understand the numbers of this class of the population if 
ecclesiastics in general followed the example of Henry III., Bishop 
of Liege, whose natural children amounted to no less than sixty-five. 5 



1 Baluz. et Mansi I. 211. 

2 Specul. Saxon. Lib. in. art. 45. 

3 Kichstich Landrecht, Lib. n. c. 25. 

4 Michelet, Origines des Loix, p. 68. 
This popular phrase gives point to the 
story told by Henri Estienne of a Ger- 
man ambassador to Eome, to whom, on 
his farewell audience, the pope gave a 
message to his master, commencing, 
"Tell our well-beloved son" — The 
honest Teuton could not contain him- 
self at what he took to be a flagrant 
insult, and he interrupted the diplo- 
matic courtesies with an angry excla- 
mation that his noble master was not 
the son of a priest. — Apol. pour Hero- 
dote, Liv. I. chap. iii. 

5 This admirable prelate, after enjoy- 
ing the episcopate for twenty-seven 
years, was at length deposed in 1274 by 
Gregory X., at the council of Lyons, 
in consequence of his excesses " prse- 



sertem de deflorationibus virginum, 
stupris matronarum et incestibus moni- 
alium" (Chron. Cornel. Zanfliet, ann. 
1272). For some details of his excesses, 
see the epistle addressed to him by 
Gregory X. in Hardouin, Concil. T. 
VII. p. 665. As Gregory had been 
archdeacon of Liege, he was probably 
familiar with the subject. Henry's 
promotion to the see of Liege was part 
of the policy of Innocent IV. in ele- 
vating William of Holland, his brother, 
to the imperial throne as a competitor 
to Frederic II. By special dispensation 
Henry had enjoyed the see for ten years 
before he was ordained to the priest- 
hood, and after his degradation he in- 
fested the bishopric for twelve years, 
until his death, one of his exploits being 
the killing of his successor, John of 
Enghien. — Hist. Monast. S. Laurent. 
Leodiens. Lib. v. c. 69 (Martene Ampl. 
Collect. IV. 1105). 



CHILDREN OF ECCLESIASTICS. 



337 



The direct encouragement thus given to illicit connections, by pro- 
viding for the children sprung from them, neutralized one of the 
principal modes by which the church endeavored to suppress them. 
The innumerable canons issued during this period, forbidding and 
pronouncing null and void all testamentary provisions in favor of 
concubines and descendants, prove not only how much stress was 
laid upon this as an efficient means of repression, but also how little 
endeavor was made by the guilty parties to conceal their sin. As 
all testaments came within the sphere of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it 
would seem that there should have been no difficulty in enforcing 
regulations of this kind, yet their constant repetition proves either 
that those who were intrusted with their execution were habitually 
remiss, or else that the popular feelings were in favor of the unfortu- 
nates, and interfered with the efficacy of the laws. 

A single instance, out of many that might be cited, will illustrate 
this. In 1225 the Cardinal-legate Conrad held, at Mainz, a national 
council of the German empire, of which one of the canons declared 
that, in order to abolish the custom of ecclesiastics leaving to their 
concubines and children the fruits of their benefices, not only should 
such legacies be void, but those guilty of the attempt should lie 
unburied, all who endeavored to enforce such testaments should be 
anathematized, and the church where it was permitted should lie 
under an interdict as long as the wrong was permitted. 1 The terrible 
rigor of these provisions shows how deep seated was the evil aimed 
at; nor were they uncalled for when we see a will, executed in 1218 
by no less a personage than Gotfrid, Archdeacon of Wurzburg, in 
which he leaves legacies to the children whom he confesses to have 
been born in sin, and of whom he expects his relatives to take charge. 2 
Had any earnest attempt been made to enforce the canons of the 
Legate, they would have been amply sufficient to eradicate the evil ; 
yet their utter inefficiency is demonstrated by the council of Fritzlar 
in 1246, and that of Cologne in 1260. The former of these was 
held by the Archbishop of Mainz ; it has no canons directed against 
concubinage, which was as public as ever, but it deplores the dilapi- 
dation of the temporalities of the church by the testamentary pro- 



1 Concil. German, ann. 1225 c. 5 
(Hartzheim III. 521). This council 
was assembled to check the prevalent 
vices of concubinage and simony, and 



its elaborate provisions show how fruit- 
less previous efforts had been. 

2 Gudeni Cod. Diplom. II. 36.— Not 
a few testaments of this kind are pre- 
served. 



22 



338 



RESULTS, 



visions of priests in favor of their guilty partners and children, and 
it repeats, with additional emphasis, the regulations of 1225. 1 The 
latter renews the complaint that priests not only continue their evil 
courses throughout life, but are not ashamed, on their death-beds, 
to leave to their children the patrimony of Christ ; and another pro- 
vision is equally significant in forbidding priests to be present at the 
marriages of their children, or that such marriages should be sol- 
emnized with pomp and ostentation. 2 The following year another 
council, held at Mainz, repeated the prohibition as to the diversion 
of church property to the consorts and natural children of priests; 3 
while that regarding the solemnization of their children's marriages 
was renewed by the synod of Olmutz in 1342. 4 In 1416 the synod 
of Breslau deplored that the old canons were forgotten and despised, 
and that priests were not ashamed to bequeath to their bastards accu- 
mulations of property which would form fit portions for lofty nobles. 5 
How thoroughly in fact it was deemed a matter of course for the 
children of ecclesiastics to marry well and to have good dowries, is 
to be seen in Chaucer's description of the wife of " deinous Simeldn", 
the proud miller of Trompington : — 

" A wif he hadde, comen of noble kin ; 
The person of the toun hire father was. 
With hire he yaf ful many a panne of bras, 
For that Simkin shuld in his blood allie. 
She was yfostered in a nonnerie." (The Reves Tale.) 

As time wore on, and the clergy, despite the innumerable admo- 
nitions and threats which were everywhere showered upon them, 
persisted in retaining their female companions, they appear, in some 
places, to have gradually assumed the privilege as a matter of right ; 
and, what is even more remarkable, they seem to have had a certain 
measure of success in the assumption. In 1284 the Papal Legate, 



1 Concil. Fritzlar. ann. 1246 can. xi. 
(Hartzheim III. 574). 

2 Concil. Coloniens. ann. 1260 c. 1. 

3 Concil. Mogunt. ann. 1261 can. 
xxvii. xxxix. (Hartzheim III. 604, 
607). The latter canon is very pro- 
lix and earnest, and inveighs strongly 
against the "cullagium," or payment 
exacted by archdeacons and deans for 
permitting irregularities. The author- 
ities apparently grew gradually tired 
of attempting the impossible. In 1284 
the council of Passau, in a series of 



long and elaborate canons, contented 
itself with a vague threat of prosecuting 
priests who publicly kept concubines, 
and with prohibiting them from osten- 
tatiously celebrating the marriage of 
their children. — Concil. Patav. ann. 
1284 can. ix. xxxi. (Ibid. pp. 675, 
679). 

* Synod. Olomucens. ann. 1342 cap. 
viii. (Hartzheim IV. 338). 

5 Synod. Wratislav. ann. 1416 \ 1 
(Hartzheim V. 153). 



CONCUBINAGE RECOGNIZED. 339 

Gerard Bishop of Sabina, at the Council of Amalfi, renewed and 
strengthened the decretals of Alexander III. respecting the concubi- 
nary priests of the Neapolitan provinces, ordering the ejection of all 
who should not separate from their partners within a month, sus- 
pending all prelates who should neglect to enforce the rule, and fining 
heavily those who, as in so many other places, made the frailties of 
their subordinates a source of filthy gain. 1 The severity of these 
provisions was as unsuccessful as usual, and at length the secular 
power endeavored to come to the assistance of the ecclesiastical 
authorities. The pious Charles the Lame of Naples, whose close 
alliance with Rome rendered him eager in everything that would 
gratify the head of the church, about the year 1300 imposed a heavy 
fine on the concubines of priests if they persisted in their sin for a 
year after excommunication. This law, like so many similar ones, 
soon fell into desuetude, but in 1317, under his son Robert the 
Good, the justiciary of the Principato Citra undertook to put it into 
execution. In the diocese of Marsico the clergy openly resisted 
these proceedings, boldly laid their complaints before the king, and 
were so energetic that Robert was obliged to issue an ordinance 
directing the discontinuance of all processes before the lay tribunals, 
and granting that the concubines should be left to the care of the 
ecclesiastical courts alone. These women thus, by reason of their 
sinful courses, came to be invested with a quasi-ecclesiastical charac- 
ter, and to enjoy the dearly prized immunities attached to that posi- 
tion, at a time when the church was vigorously striving to uphold 
and extend the privileges which the civil lawyers were systematically 
laboring to undermine. Nor was the pretension thus advanced suf- 
fered to lapse. Towards the close of the same century, Carlo Mala- 
testa of Rimini applied to Ancarono, a celebrated doctor of canon 
and civil law ("juris canonici speculum et civilis anchora"), to know 
whether he could impose penalties on the concubines of priests, and 
the learned jurist replied decidedly in the negative; while other 
legal authorities have not hesitated to state that such women are 
fully entitled to immunity from secular jurisdiction, as belonging to 
the families of clerks — de familia clericorum. 2 When a premium 
was thus offered for sin, and the mistresses of priests — like the 



1 Concil. Melfitan. ann. 1284 c. v. 
(Martene Ampl. Coll. VII. 285-6). 

a Giannone, Apologia cap. xiv. — 
Ancarono gave his name to one of the 



most celebrated colleges of law in Bo- 
logna. — Bruni Vita Gabrielis Palseoti 
c. 4 (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 1390). 



340 



KESULTS, 



maitresses-en-titre of the Bourbons — acquired a certain honorable 
position among their fellows from the mere fact of their ministering 
to the unhallowed lusts of their pastors, it is not to be wondered at 
if such connections multiplied and flourished, and if the humble laity 
came to regard them as an established institution. 

Robert of Naples was not the only potentate who found an orga- 
nized resistance to his well-meant endeavors to restore discipline. 
When, in 1410, the stout William, Bishop-elect of Paderborn, had 
triumphed with fire and sword over his powerful foes, the Archbishop 
of Cologne and the Count of Cleves, he turned his energies to the 
reformation of the dissolute morals of his monks. They positively 
refused to submit to the ejection of their women from the monasteries, 
and he at length found the task too impracticable even for his war- 
like temper. For seven long years the quarrel lasted, legal proceed- 
ings being varied by attempts at poison on the one side, and reckless 
devastations by the episcopal troops on the other, until the prelate, 
worn out by the stubbornness of his flock, was obliged to give way. 1 

Equal success waited on the resistance of the Swiss clergy when, 
in 1230, the civil authorities of Zurich sacrilegiously ordered them 
to dismiss their women. They resolutely replied that they were 
flesh and blood, unequal to the task of living like angels, and unable 
to attend to the kitchen and other household duties. The townsmen 
entered into a league against them, and succeeded in driving away 
some of the sacerdotal consorts, when the Bishop of Constance and 
his chapter, allowing perhaps the pride of the churchman to get the 



1 Gobelinae Personse Cosmodrom. 
JStat. vi. c. 92, 93.— How utterly mo- 
nastic discipline was neglected in 
Germany is shown by the fact that a 
century earlier, in 1307, a council of 
Cologne found it necessary to denounce 
the frequency with which nuns were 
seduced, left their convents, lived in 
open and public profligacy, and then 
returned unblushingly to their estab- 
lishments, where they seem to have 
been received as a matter of course. 
— Concil. Colon, ann. 1307 c. xvii. 
(Hartzheim IV. 113). That this had 
little effect is proved by a repetition 
of the threats of punishment, three 
years later (Concil. Colon, ann. 1310 
c. ix.; Hartzheim IV. 122). In 1347, 
John van Arckel, Bishop of Utrecht, 
was obliged to prohibit men from hav- 
ing access to the nunneries of his dio- 



cese, in order to put an end to the 
scandals which were apparently fre- 
quent (Hartzheim IV. 350). In 1350, 
the Emperor Charles IV. felt called 
upon to address an earnest remon- 
strance to the Archbishop of Mainz 
concerning the unclerical habits of 
his canons and clergy who spent the 
revenues of the church in jousts and 
tourneys, and who, in dress, arms, 
and mode of life, were not to be dis- 
tinguished from laymen (Ibid. IV. 
358). How little was effected by 
these efforts is manifest when, in 1360, 
"William, Archbishop of Cologne, was 
obliged to refute the assertions of those 
monks and nuns who alleged in their 
defence that custom allowed them to 
leave their convents and contract mar- 
riage (Ibid. IV. 493). 



MORALS OF ROME. 341 

better of ascetic zeal, interfered with a threat of excommunication on 
all who should presume to intervene in a matter which related 
specially to the church. He absolved the leaguers from the oaths 
with which they were mutually bound, and thus restored security to 
the priestly households. About the same time Gregory IX. appointed 
a certain Boniface to the see of Lausanne. On his installation, the 
new bishop commenced with ardor to enforce the canons, but the 
clergy conspired against his life, and were so nearly successful that 
he incontinently fled, and never ventured to return. 1 

If the irregular though permanent connections which everywhere 
prevailed had been the only result of the prohibition of marriage, 
there might perhaps have been little practical evil flowing from it, 
except to the church itself and to its guilty members. When the 
desires of man, however, are once tempted to seek through unlawful 
means the relief denied to them by artificial rules, it is not easy to 
set bounds to the unbridled passions which, irritated by the fruitless 
effort at repression, are no longer restrained by a law which has been 
broken or a conscience which has lost its power. The records of the 
Middle Ages are accordingly full of the evidences that indiscriminate 
license of the worst kind prevailed throughout every rank of the 
hierarchy. 

Even supposing that this fearful immorality were not attributable 
to the immutable laws of nature revenging themselves for their 
attempted violation, it could readily be explained by the example set 
by the central head. Scarcely had the efforts of Nicholas and 
Gregory put an end to sacerdotal marriage in Rome when the morals 
of the Roman clergy became a disgrace to Christendom. How little 
the results of the reform corresponded with the hopes of the zealous 
puritans who had brought it about may be gathered from the mar- 
tyrdom of a certain Arnolfo, who, under the pontificate of Honorius 
II., preached vehemently against the scandals and immorality of the 
ecclesiastics of the apostolic city. They succeeded in making way 
with him, notwithstanding the protection of Honorius, and the 
veneration of the nobles and people who regarded him as a prophet. 2 
When such was the condition of clerical virtue, we can scarcely 
wonder that sufficient suffrages were given in 1130 by the sacred 
college to Cardinal Pier-Leone to afford him a plausible claim to the 



1 Henke, Append, ad Calixt. pp. 585-6. 

2 Trithem. Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1128. — Platina sub Honor. II. 



342 



EESULTS 



papacy, although he was notoriously stained with the foulest crimes. 
Apparently his children by his sister Tropea, and his carrying about 
with him a concubine when travelling in the capacity of papal legate, 
had not proved a bar to his elevation in the church, nor to his em- 
ployment in the most conspicuous and important affairs. 1 A severer 
satire on the standard of ecclesiastical morality could scarcely be 
imagined than the inculcation by such a man, in his capacity as pope, 
of the canons requiring the separation of priests from their wives, on 
the plea of the spotless purity required for the service of the altar. 2 

What were the influences of the papal court in the next century 
may be gathered from the speech which Cardinal Hugo made to the 
Lyonese, on the occasion of the departure of Innocent IY. in 1251 
from their city, after a residence of eight years — "Friends, since our 
arrival here, we have done much for your city. When we came, we 
found here three or four brothels. We leave behind us but one. 
We must own, however, that it extends without interruption from the 
eastern to the western gate" — the crude cyncism of which greatly 
disconcerted the Lyonese ladies present. 3 Robert Grosseteste, 
Bishop of Lincoln, therefore only reflected the popular conviction 
when, on his deathbed in 1253, inveighing against the corruption of 
the papal court, he applied to it the lines — 

Ejus avaritisB totus non sufficit orbis, 
Ejus luxuriae meretrix non sufficit omnis. 4 

A hundred years later saw the popes again in France. For forty 
years they had bestowed on Avignon all the benefits, moral and 
spiritual, arising from the presence of the Vicegerent of Christ, when 
Petrarch recorded, for the benefit of friends whom he feared to com- 
promise by naming, the impressions produced by his long residence 
there in the household of a leading dignitary of the church. Lan- 
guage seems too weak to express his abhorrence of that third Babylon, 
that Hell upon Earth, which could furnish no Noah, no Deucalion 



1 Arnulphi Lexoviens. de Schism ate 
cap. iii. (D'Achery I. 156). 

2 Anacleti Antipapee Epist. X. (Mar- 
tene Ampliss. Collect. I. 702). 

3 Matt. Paris ann. 1251. 

4 Matt. Paris Hist. Angl. ann. 1253. 
— The same author preserves a legend 
that when Innocent IY. heard of the 



death of Grosseteste, he ordered a letter 
to be prepared commanding Henry III. 
to dig up and cast out the remains of 
the bishop. The following night, how- 
ever, Grosseteste appeared in his epis- 
copal robes and with his crozier in- 
flicted a severe castigation on the 
vengeful pope, who thereupon aban- 
doned his unchristian purpose. — Ibid, 
ann. 1254. 



THE CHARACTER OF THE PAPAL COURT. 



343 



to survive the deluge that alone could cleanse its filth — and yet he 
intimates that fear compels him to restrain the full expression of his 
feelings. Chastity was a reproach and licentiousness a virtue. The 
aged prelates surpassed their younger brethren in wickedness as in 
years, apparently considering that age conferred upon them the 
license to do that from which even youthful libertines shrank ; while 
the vilest crimes were the pastimes of pontifical ease. 1 Juvenal and 
Brantome can suggest nothing more shameless or more foul. Nor 
was the tone of morality heightened when, fifty years later, Nicholas 
de Clemanges takes up the tale. His brief reference to the adulteries 
and vileness with which the cardinals befouled the papal court, and 
the obscenities in which their families imitated their example, shows 
that the matter was so generally understood that it needed no details. 2 
The Great Schism perhaps could scarcely be expected to improve 
the morals of the papal court. Yet when the church universal, to 
close that weary quarrel, agreed to receive one of the competitors as 
its head, surely it might have selected, as the visible representative 
of God upon earth, some more worthy embodiment of humanity 
than Balthazar Cossa, who, as John XXIII., is alone, of the three 
competitors, recognized in the list of popes. When the great council 
of Constance in 1415 adopted the awful expedient of trying, con- 
demning, and deposing a pope, the catalogue of crimes — notorious 
incest, adultery, defilement, homicide, and atheism — of which the 
fathers formally accused him, and which he confessed without defend- 



1 Portions of Petrarch's descriptions 
are unfit for transcription ; the follow- 
ing, however, will give a sufficient idea 
of his experience. " Veritas ibi de- 
mentia est, abstinentia vero rusticitas, 
pudicitia probrum ingens. Denique 
peccandi licentia magnanimitas et 
libertas eximia, et quo pollutior eo 
clarior vita, quo plus scelerum eo 
plus gloriae, bonum nomen coeno villus, 
atque ultima mercium fama est. . . . 
Taceo utriusque pestis artifices, et con- 
cursantes pontificum thalamis proxo- 
naetas . . . Quis, oro, enim non iras- 
catur et rideat, illos senes pueros coma 
Candida, togis amplissimis, adeoque 
lascivientibus animis ut nihil illuc 
falsius videatur quam quod ait Maro 
' Frigidus in Venerem senior.' Tarn 
calidi tamque praecipites in Venerem 
senes sunt, tanta eos aetatis et status 
et virium capit oblivio, sic in libidines 
inardescunt, sic in omne ruunt dedecus, 



quasi omnis eorum gloria non in cruce 
Christi sit, sed in commessationibus et 
ebrietatibus, et quae has sequuntur in 
cubilibus, impudicitiis : . . . atque hoc 
unum senectutis ultimae lucrum putant, 
ea facere quae juvenes non auderent 
. . . Mitto stupra, raptus, incestus, 
adulteria qui jam pontificalis lasciviae 
ludi sunt," etc. (Lib. sine Titulo Epist. 
xvi.). 

In his vii. Eclogue Petrarch de- 
scribes the cardinals individually. 
Their portraits, though metaphorically 
drawn, correspond with the general 
character of the above extracts. See 
also the Lib, sine Titulo Epistt. vii. 
viii. ix. 

2 Nic. de Clamengiis de Ruina Ec- 
clesiae cap. xvii. — Cf. Theod. a Niem 
Nemor. Union. Tract, vi. cap. xxxvi. 
xxxvii. 



344 



RESULTS 



ing himself, 1 is fearfully suggestive of the corruption which could not 
only spawn such a monster, but could elevate him to the highest 
place in the hierarchy, and present him for the veneration of 
Christendom. It affords a curious insight into the notions of 
morality prevalent in the Papal court to observe that when he had 
as chamberlain of Boniface IX., scandalized Rome by openly keep- 
ing his brother's wife as a concubine, the remedy adopted for the 
disorder was to create him Cardinal and send him as legate to 
Bologna, while the lady was conveyed to her husband in Naples. 
The result of this course of procedure was that during his sway at 
Bologna two hundred maids, matrons, and widows, including a few 
nuns, fell victims to his brutal lust. 2 So obtuse, in fact, were the sen- 
sibilities of the age, that after his release from the prison to which he 
had been consigned by the fathers of Constance, his successor, Martin 
V. consoled him in his degradation by creating him Dean of the 
Sacred College. 

If the Councils of Constance and of Bale worked some apparent 
reform in the outward morality of the papacy, their effect soon passed 
away. The latter half of the fifteenth century scarcely saw a 
supreme pontiff without the visible evidences of human frailty around 
him, the unblushing acknowledgment of which is the fittest com- 
mentary on the tone of clerical morality. Sixtus IV. was believed 
to embody the utmost possible concentration of human wicked- 
ness, 3 until Borgia came to divide with him the preeminence of 



1 Quod dominus Johannes papa cum 
uxore fratris sui et cum Sanctis moni- 
alibus incestum, cum virginibus stu- 
prum, et cum conjugatis adulterium 
et alia incontinentia crimina, propter 
quae ira Dei descendit in filios diffi- 
dentise commisit. . . . Item quod 
dictus dominus Johannes papa fuit 
et sit homo peccator, notorie crimi- 
nosus de homicidio, veneficio, et aliis 
gravibus criminibus quibus irretitus 
dicitur graviter diffamatus, dissipator 
bonorum ecclesise et dilapidator eorun- 
dem, notorius simoniacus, pertinax 
hsereticus et ecclesiam Christi notorie 
scandalizans. Item quod dictus Jo- 
hannes Papa XXIII. ssepe et ssepius 
coram diversis prselatis et aliis honestis 
et probis viris pertinaciter, diabolo sua- 
dente, dixit, asseruit, dogmatizavit et 
adstruxit, vitam asternam non esse, 
neque aliam post hanc, etc. — Concil. 
Constantiens. Sess. xi. 



Even supposing some of these special 
charges to have been manufactured for 
the purpose of effecting the desirable 
political object of getting rid of the 
objectionable pontiff, yet the profound 
conviction of his vileness, evinced by 
the proffering of such accusations, is 
almost equally damaging. 

2 Theod. a Niem de Yit. Joann. 
XXIII. 

3 Leno vorax, pathicus, meretrix, dela- 

tor, adulter, 
Si Eomam veniet, illico, cretus erit. 
Psedico insignis, prsed© furiosus, adul- 
ter, 
Exitiumque Urbis, perniciesque Dei, 
Gaude prisce Nero, superat te crimine 
Sixtus, 
Hie scelus omne simul clauditur et 
vitium. 
Steph. Infessurse Diar. Rom. ann. 
1484 (Eccard. Corp. Hist. II. 1941). 



POPES OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 



345 



evil. The success of Innocent VIII. in increasing the population 
of Rome was a favorite topic with the wits of the day; 1 but the 
epitaph which declared that filth, gluttony, avarice, and sloth lay 
buried in his tomb 2 did not anticipate the immediate resurrection of 
the worst of those vices in the person of his successor Alexander VI. 
If the crimes of Borgia were foul, their number and historical im- 
portance have rendered them so well known that I may be spared 
more than a passing allusion to a career which has made his name 
synonymous with all that can degrade man to a level at once with 
the demon and the brute. 3 

Such men as Alexander can hardly be deemed exceptional, save 
inasmuch as brilliant talents and native force of character might 
enable them to excel their contemporaries in guilt as in ambition. 
They were the natural product of a system which for four centuries 
had bent the unremitting energies of the church to securing temporal 
power and wealth, with exemption from the duties and liabilities of 
the citizen. Such were the fruits of the successful theocracy of 
Hildebrand, which, intrusting irresponsible authority to fallible 
humanity, came to regard ecclesiastical aggrandizement as a full 
atonement for all and every crime. That the infection had spread 
even to the ultimate fibres of the establishment can readily be 
believed, for the supremacy of the Papal authority gave it the power 
of controlling the character of every parish in Christendom. We 
shall see hereafter, as we have already seen, how that power was 
habitually abused, and how the nullification of the canons was a 
recognized source of income to the successor of St. Peter and his 
needy officials. The evil was one that had long been recognized and 
complained of since Hincmar of Rheims so emphatically denounced 



1 Innocuo priscos sequam est debere 

Quirites. 
Progenie exhaustam restituit pa- 
triam. 

(Sannazarii Epigram. Lib. I.) 

2 Spurcities, gula, avaritia, atque igna- 

via deses, 
Hoc, Octave, jacent quo tegeris tu- 
mulo. 

(Marulli Epigram. Lib. iv.) 

8 Sannazaro, as was meet in a Nea- 
politan, hated Alexander cordially, 
and was never weary of assailing his 
wickedness. The relations between 
him and his daughter Lucretia were a 
favorite topic — 



Ergo te semper cupiet Lucretia Sextus? 
fatum diri nominis ! hie pater est? 
(Sannazar. Epigr. Lib. n.) 

Humana jura, nee minus coelestia, 

Ipsosque sustulit Deos: 
Ut silicet Hceret (heu scelus) patri 

Natse sinum permingere, 
Nee execrandis abstinere nuptiis 

Timore sublato simul. 

(Ibid.) 

The well-known epigram of Ponta- 
nus tersely describes another of his 
vices — 

Vendit Alexander sacramenta, altaria, 
Christum. 
Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest. 



346 



KESULTS, 



it. St. Bernard declared that Rome was the acknowledged refuge 
of all ambitious and licentious men who desired either promotion or 
to retain the preferment which they had forfeited. 1 In the fiery zeal 
with which he warns his protege, Eugenius III., not to be deceived 
by such suitors, he shows us how useless were local efforts at refor- 
mation when they could be so readily set aside and rendered nugatory 
by the venal influences at work in the Apostolic court. But the 
abuse was too profitable to be suppressed, and it continued until after 
the Reformation had shown the necessity of some decent reticence in 
the exercise of powers no longer regarded as wholly irresponsible. 



My object has been to consider the subject of ascetic celibacy as a 
portion simply of ecclesiastical history, and yet I cannot well con- 
clude this section without a hasty glance at its influence on society 
at large. That influence, as far as the secular clergy were its instru- 
ments, was evidently one of almost unmixed evil. The parish priest, 
if honestly ascetic, was thereby deprived of the wholesome common 
bond of human affections and sympathies, and was rendered less 
efficient for good in consoling the sorrows and aiding the struggles 
of his flock. If, on the other hand, he was a hypocrite, or if he had 
found too late that the burden he had assumed was too heavy for his 
strength, the denial of the natural institution of marriage was the 
source of immeasurable corruption to those intrusted to his charge, 
who looked up to him not only as a spiritual director, but as a 
superior being who could absolve them from sin, and whose partner- 
ship in guilt was in itself an absolution. 2 That such was the 
condition of innumerable parishes throughout Europe, there is 
unfortunately no reason to doubt, and all of the severer churchmen 
of the period, in attacking the vices of the clergy, give us to under- 
stand that either their example led the laity into evil, or that their 
immorality rendered it impossible for them to correct the vices of the 
flocks. As Csesarius of Heisterbach says, "Since the priesthood 
mostly lead evil and incontinent lives, they soothe rather than excite 
the consciences of the worldly." 3 The incongruity of this may per- 



1 In comparing the labors of the pope 
with those of St. Paul, St. Bernard ex- 
claims, " Numquid ad eum de toto orbe 
confluebant ambitiosi, avari, simoniaci, 
sacrilegi, concubinarii, incestuosi, et 
quseque istiusmodi monstra hominum, 
ut ipsius apostolica auctoritate vel obti- 
nerent ecclesiasticos honores, vel reti- 



nerent?" — De Consideratione Lib. I. 
c. iv. 

2 According to St. Bonaventura, this 
scandalous doctrine was frequently 
taught. — Libell. Apologet. Qusest. I. 

3 Dial Mirac. Dist. xn. c. xix. 



ETHICAL ANOMALIES. 



347 



haps explain to some extent the anomaly of the practical grossness of 
the Middle Ages, combined with the theoretical ascetic purity which 
was held out as the duty of every Christian who desired to be accept- 
able to his Creator. 

The curious contrasts and confusion of the standard of morality, 
arising from this striving against nature, are well illustrated by a 
homily of the thirteenth century against marriage, addressed to 
youthful nuns, which exhausts all the arguments that the ingenuity 
of the writer could suggest. On the one hand he appeals to the 
pride which could be so well gratified by the exalted state of virginity ; 
he pictures the superior bliss vouchsafed in heaven to those who were 
stained by no earthly contamination, confidently promising them a 
higher rank and more direct communing with the Father than would 
be bestowed on the married and the widowed ; he rapturously dwells 
upon the inward peace, the holy ecstasy which are the portion of 
those who, wedded to Christ, keep pure their mystic marriage vow ; 
and his ascetic fervor exhausts itself in depicting the spiritual delights 
of a life of religious seclusion. Mingled inextricably with these ex- 
alted visions of beatific mysticism, he presents in startling contrasts 
the retribution awaiting the sin of licentiousness and the evils insep- 
arable from a life of domestic marriage. With a crude nastiness that 
is almost inconceivable, he minutely describes all the discomforts and 
suffering, physical and mental, attendant upon wifehood and mater- 
nity, entering into every detail and gloating over every revolting 
circumstance that his prurient imagination can suggest. The license 
of Shakespeare, the plain speaking of Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the 
mediaeval trouveres show us what our ancestors were, and what they 
were is easily explained when such a medley of mysticism and gross- 
ness could be poured into the pure ears of innocent young girls by 
their spiritual director. 1 



1 Hali Meidenhad. (Early English 
Text Society, 1866.) The author at 
times trenches closely on Manichseism. 
It is true that he revives, with some 
variation, the ancient computation of 
the relative merits of the various con- 
ditions of life — " For wedlock has its 
fruit thirty fold in heaven, widowhood 
sixtyfold; maidenhood with a hun- 
dredfold overpasses both" (p. 22); 
hut while he thus faintly disavows an 
intention to revile marriage, he again 
and again alludes to it as wicked and 
impure per se. "Well were it for 



them, were they on the day of their 
"bridal borne to be buried. ... If thou 
askest why God created such a thing 
to be, I answer thee : God created it 
never such ; but Adam and Eve turned 
it to be such by their sin, and marred 
our nature " (p. 8). 

Virginity he asserts to be the highest 
attribute of humanity, and in heaven 
virgins are the equals of angels and the 
superiors of saints. — " Maidenhood is a 
grace granted thee from heaven. . . 
'Tis a virtue above all virtues, and to 
Christ the most acceptable of all" 



348 



EESULTS 



Thus, with, the fearful immorality of which we have seen such 
ample evidence, the church still presented the same exaggerated 
asceticism as her guiding principle. The rhapsodies of St. John 
Chrysostom and St. Aldhelm were rivalled in an age when the priest 
was forbidden to live in the same house as his mother, because ex- 
perience had shown the danger of such propinquity. How the esti- 
mate placed on purity increased as virtue diminished is fairly 
illustrated in a characteristic legend which was very popular with 
ecclesiastical teachers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It 
relates how a pagan entering a heathen temple saw Satan seated in 
state on a throne. One of the princes of Hell entered, worshipped 
his master, and proceeded to give an account of his work. For 
thirty days he had been engaged in provoking a war, wherein many 
battles had been fought with heavy slaughter. Satan sharply re- 
proached him with accomplishing so little in the time, and ordered 
him to be severely punished. Another then approached the throne 
and reported that he had devoted twenty days to raising tempests at 
sea, whereby navies had been wrecked and multitudes drowned. He 
was likewise reproved and punished for wasting his time. A third 
had for ten days been engaged in troubling the wedding festivity of a 
city, causing strife and murder, and he was similarly treated. A 
fourth then entered and recounted how for forty years he had been 
occupied in tempting a hermit to yield to fleshly desire, and how he 
had that night succeeded. Then Satan arose and placed his crown 
on the head of the new-comer, seating him on the throne as one who 
had worthily achieved a signal triumph. The spectator, thus seeing 



(p. 10). " To sing that sweet song 
and that heavenly music which no 
saints may sing, but maidens only in 
heaven. . . . But the maiden's song is 
altogether unlike these, being common 
to them with angels. Music beyond 
all music in heaven. In their circle is 
God himself; and his dear mother, the 
precious maiden, is hidden in that 
blessed company of gleaming maidens, 
nor may any but thev dance and sing ' ' 
(pp. 18-20). _ 

As for matrimony and maternity, 
nothing can redeem them in the eyes 
of the ascetic. — "All other sins are 
nothing but sins, but this is a sin and 
besides denaturalizes thee and dishon- 
ored thy body. It soileth thy soul 



and maketh it guilty before God, and, 
moreover, defileth thy flesh. . . . Now 
what joy hath the mother? She hath 
from the misshapen child sad care and 
shame, both, and for the thriving one 
fear, till she lose it for good, though it 
would never have been in being for the 
love of God, nor for the hope of heaven, 
nor for the dread of hell" (p. 34). — 
But I dare not follow him in his more 
nauseous flights of imagination. 

This is by no means a solitary ex- 
ample. The same pious obscenity is 
to be found, for instance, in some of 
Abelard's theological speculations ad- 
dressed to Heloise and her nuns, as in 
his solution of her 42nd problem. 



STANDAKDS OF MORALITY 



349 



the high estimate placed by the Evil One on ascetic chastity, was 
immediately converted, and forthwith became a monk. 1 

While thus attaching so fanciful a holiness to virginity, the church 
came practically to erect a most singular standard of morality, the 
influence of which could but be most deplorable on the mass of the 
laity. In the earlier days of celibacy, the rule was regarded by the 
severer ecclesiastics as simply an expression of the necessity of purity 
in the minister of God. Theophilus of Alexandria, in the fifth 
century, decided that a man, who as lector had been punished for 
unchastity and had subsequently risen to the priesthood, must be ex- 
pelled on account of his previous sin. 2 We have seen, however, how, 
when celibacy was revived under Damiani and Hildebrand, the 
question of immorality virtually disappeared, and the essential point 
became, not that a priest should be chaste, but that he should be un- 
married, and this was finally adopted as the recognized law of the 
church. In 1213 the Archbishop of Lunden enquired of Innocent 
III. whether a man who had had two concubines was ineligible to 
orders as a digamus, and the pontiff could only reply that no matter 
how many concubines a man might have, either at one time or in 
succession, he did not incur the disability of digamy. 3 When such 
was the result of seven centuries of assiduous sacerdotalism in a 
church which was daily growing in authority ; when the people thus 
saw that sexual excesses were no bar to ecclesiastical preferment in 
that church which made extravagant pretensions to purity ; when the 
strict rules which forbade ordination to a layman who had married 



1 Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 328 (Early 
English Text Soc. 1866). This is a 
translation made in 1340 of " Le Somme 
des Vices et des Vertues," written in 
1279 for Philippe-le-Hardi, by Lauren- 
tius Gallus. The author is not a whit 
behind his brother ascetics in extolling 
the praises of virginity. — " Vor mayden- 
hod is a tresor of zuo grat worth thet 
hit ne may by be nonen y-zet a pris . . . 
vor maidenhod aboue alle othre states 
berth thet gretteste frut" (Ibid. p. 
233-4). The legend would seem to be 
suggested by a somewhat similar story 
narrated by Gregory the Great (Dialog. 
Lib. in. cap. 7). 

2 Theophili Alexandrin. Commoni- 
tor. can. v. (Harduin. I. 1198). 

3 Innocent. III. Eegest. Lib. xvi. 
Epist. 118. 



The curiously artificial standard of 
morals thus created may be estimated 
from the case of the archdeacon of 
Lisieux, who refused to accept an elec- 
tion to the see of that place on account 
of his inability to maintain the purity 
requisite for the episcopal office. Van- 
quished at length by the importunity of 
his friends, he was consecrated, and 
resolutely undertook to abandon his 
evil habits. The unaccustomed priva- 
tion brought on a fearful disease, but 
though assured that his life would prove 
a sacrifice if he persisted in his resolu- 
tion, he resisted all entreaties, and re- 
fused to purchase existence by sullying 
his position. He thus fell a martyr to 
a tenderness of conscience which had 
not prevented him from indulgence 
while filling the responsible position of 
archdeacon. — Girald. Cambrens. Gemm. 
Eccles. Dist. n. cap. xi. 



350 



RESULTS. 



a widow, were relaxed in favor of those who were stained with 
notorious impurity, it is no wonder that the popular perceptions of 
morality became blunted, and that the laity did not deny themselves 
the indulgences which they saw tacitly allowed to their spiritual 
guides. 

Nor was it only in stimulating this general laxity of principle 
that the influence of the church was disastrous. The personal evil 
wrought by a dissolute priesthood was a wide-spreading contagion. 
The abuse of the awful authority given by the altar and the confes- 
sional, was a subject of sorrowful and indignant denunciation in too 
many synods for a reasonable doubt to be entertained of its frequency 
or of the corruption which it spread through innumerable parishes 
and nunneries. 1 The almost entire practical immunity with which 
these and similar scandals were perpetrated led to an undisguised 
and cynical profligacy which the severer churchmen acknowledged to 
exercise a most deleterious influence on the morals of the laity, who 
thus saw the examplars of evil in those who should have been their 
patterns of virtue. 2 In his bull of 1259, Alexander IV. does not 
hesitate to declare that the people, instead of being reformed, are 
absolutely corrupted by their pastors. 3 Thomas of Cantinpre, one 
of the early lights of the Dominican order, indeed, is authority for 



1 Graviore autem sunt animadver- 
sione plectendi, qui proprias filias spi- 
rituals, quas baptizaverint vel semel 
ad confessionem admiserint, violaverint. 
— Constit. Synod. Gilb. Episc. Circes- 
trens. ann. 1289 (Wilkins, II. 169). 
Cf. Synod. Cenomanens. ann. 1248 
(Martene Ampl. Coll. VII. 1375). Con- 
cil. Kemens. ann. 1408 cap. 21 (Ibid. 
VII. 418). Concil. Salisburg. XXX. 
can. de Confess. (Dalham, Concil. Salis- 
burg. p. 155.) 

Abelard (Sermo XXIX.) in a passage 
which, though addressed to the virgins 
of the Paraclete, is hardly quotable, 
asserts the frequent corruption of nuns 
by their spiritual directors. See also 
St. Bonaventura, Tractatus quare Fr. 
Minores praedicent, (Koma3 1773, p. 431) 
and Gerson, who retorts the charge on 
the friars, in his Tract, de Eeform. Ec- 
cles. in Concil. Constant, cap. x. (Von 
der Hardt, T. I. P. V. p. 93). Cf. Mar- 
silii Patav. Defens. Pacis P. n. cap. 
xvii. — Synod. Andegavens. ann. 1262 
cap. x.: ann. 1291 cap. 1; ann. 1312 
cap. 1 (D'Achery I. 727, 735, 742). 



Similar allusions are unfortunately too 
frequent, and, as we shall see hereafter, 
are to be found until a recent period. 

2 In 1398, Cardinal Peter d'Ailly, 
Bishop of Cambrai, speaks of the man- 
ner in which his clergy lived with their 
concubines as man and wife, and brought 
up their children without concealment 
in their houses — "tenentes secum in 
suis domibus suas concubinas, et mulieres 
publice suspectas, in scandalum pluri- 
morum cohabitant simul copulati , eisdem 
domo, mensa, et lecto, residendo, acsi 
essent vir et uxor matrimonialiter con- 
junct : proles super terram gradientes 
ex hujusmodi suis concubinis susceptas 
una cum eisdem in suis domibus publice 
secum habendo et tenendo" — (Hartz- 
heim VI. 709). 

3 Prout testatur nimia de plerisque 
regionibus damans Christiani populi 
corruptela, quae cum deberet ex sacer- 
dotalis antidoti curari medelis, invalescit 
proh dolor ! ex malorum contagione 
quod procedit a clero.— Chron. Augus- 
tens. ann. 1260. 



OPINIONS OF LAITY. 



351 



the legend which represents the devil as thanking the prelates of the 
church for conducting all Christendom to hell ; x and the conviction 
which thus expressed itself is justified by the reproach of Gregory 
X., who, in dismissing the second council of Lyons, in 1274, told 
his assembled dignitaries that they were the ruin of the world. 2 
Unfortunately, his threat to reform them if they did not reform 
themselves, remained unexecuted, and the complaint was repeated 
again and again. 3 

That this state of things was clearly understood by the laity is 
only too visibly reflected in contemporary records. When, in 1374, 
the dancing mania, one of those strange epidemics which afflicted the 
Middle Ages, broke out through Germany and Flanders, the populace 
called to mind the forgotten regulations of Damiani and Hildebrand, 
and found a ready explanation of the visitation by assuming it to be 
a consequence of the vitiated baptism of the people by a concubinary 
priesthood. 4 Chaucer, with his wide range of observation and 
shrewd native sense, took a less superstitious, and more practical view 
of the evil, and in the admirable sermon which forms his " Persone's 
Tale" he records the convictions which every pure-minded man 
must have felt with regard to the demoralizing tendencies of the 
sacerdotal licentiousness of the time. 5 

How instinctively, indeed, the popular mind assumed the immo- 
rality of the pastor is illustrated by a passage in the earliest French 
pastoral that has reached us, dating from the latter half of the 
thirteenth century 

Warniers. Segneur je sui trop courechies. 

Guios. Comment ? 

"Warniers. Mehales est agute, 

M'amie, el s'a este dechute ; 
Car on dist que ch'est de no prestre. 



1 According to Thomas of Cantinpre, 
this occurrence took place at Paris, in a 
synod held in 1248, and Satan explained 
his candor by saying that he was com- 
pelled to it by G-od. — (Hartzheim IX. 
663.) 

2 Inter alia dixit quod praelati facie- 
bant ruere totum mundum. . . . Unde 
monuit eos quod ipsi se corrigerent . . . 
alioquin dixit se dure acturum cum 
ipsis super reformatione morum. — Har- 
duin. VII. 692. 

3 Clerici et presbyteri .... maxime 
per fetidum peccatum luxuriae seipsos et 
alios pertrahunt ad infernum. — Concil. 



Parisiens. ann. 1323 can. iii. (Mar- 
tene Ampl. Coll. VII. 1289). 

* Petri de Herentals Vit. Gregor. XI. 
ann. 1375 (ap. Hecker, Epidemics of 
the Middle Ages, London, 1845, p. 153). 

5 " Swiche preestes be the sones of 
Hely . . . hem thinketh that they be 
free and have no juge, no more than 
hath a free boll, that taketh which cow 
that him liketh in the toun. So faren 
they by women ; for right as on free 
boll is ynough for all a toun, right so is 
a wicked preest corruption ynough for 
all a parish, or for all a countree." 



352 RESULTS. 

Rogaus. En non Dieu ! "Warnier, bien puet estre ; 

Car ele i aloit trop souvent. 
"Warniees. He, las ! jou avoie en couvent 

De li temprement espouser. 
Guios. Tu te pues bien trop dolouser, 

Biaus tres dous amis ; ne te caille, 

Car ja ne meteras maaille, 

Que bien sai, a 1' enfant warder. 1 

Those who were heretically disposed were keen to take advantage 
of a weakness so general and so universally understood. The author 
of the " Creed of Piers Ploughman" does not hesitate to assert with 
Gregory X. that the clergy were the corruption of the world — 

For falshed of freres 
Hath fullich encombred 
Manye of this maner men, 
And made hem to leven 
Her charite and chastite, 
And shosen hem to lustes, 
And waxen to werly, 
And wayven the trewethe, 
And leven the love of her God. 2 

The widely received feeling on this subject, perhaps, finds its 
fittest expression in a satire on the mendicant friars, written by a 
Franciscan novice who became disgusted with the order and turned 
Wickliffite. The exaggerated purity and mortification of the early 
followers of the blessed St. Francis had long since yielded to the 
temptations which attended on the magnificent success of the institu- 
tion, and the asceticism which had been powerful enough to cause 
visions of the holy Stigmata degenerated into sloth and crime which 
took advantage of the opportunities afforded by the privilege to hear 
confessions. The grosser accusations of the writer are, perhaps, 
unfit for quotation, but the spirit in which the Franciscan friars 
were regarded is sufficiently indicated by the following lines : 

For when the gode man is fro hame 
And the frere comes to oure dame, 
He spares, nauther for synne ne shame, 

That he ne dos his will. 
* * * * •* 



1 Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion (Michel, Theatre Fran§ais au Moyen Age, 
p. 129). 

2 Wright's Edition, p. 491, 1. 1359. 



ORGANIZED CONCUBINAGE. 



353 



Ich man that here shal lede his life 
That has a faire doghter or a wyfe 
Be war that no frer ham shryfe 
Nauther loude ne still. 1 

When such was the moral condition of the priesthood, and such 
were the influences which it cast upon the flocks intrusted to its 
guidance, it is not to be wondered at if those who deplored so dis- 
graceful a state of things, and whose respect for the canons precluded 
them from recommending the natural and appropriate remedy of 
marriage, should regard an organized system of concubinage as a 
safeguard. However deplorable such an alternative might be in 
itself, it was surely preferable to the mischief which the unquenched 
and ungoverned passions of a pastor might inflict upon his parish ; 
and the instances of this were too numerous and too glaring to admit 
of much hesitation in electing between the two evils. Even Gerson, 
the leader of mystic ascetics, who recorded his unbounded admiration 
for the purity of celibacy in his " Dialogus Naturse et Sophiae de 
Castitate Clericorum," 2 saw and appreciated its practical evils, and 
had no scruple in recommending concubinage as a preventive, 
which, though scandalous in itself, might serve to prevent greater 
scandals. 3 It therefore requires no great stretch of credulity to 
believe the assertion of Sleidan that in some of the Swiss Cantons, 



1 Monumenta Franciscana, pp. 602-4. 

This testimony concerning the Fran- 
ciscans is not confined to heretics and 
laymen. Early in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, a council of Magdeburg took 
occasion to reprove them for the dis- 
solute and unclerical mode of life of 
which they offered a conspicuous exam- 
ple. It appears that they dignified with 
the name of " Marthas " the female 
companions who, in primitive ages, 
were known as "agapetae," and who 
had latterly acquired among the secular 
clergy the title of "focariae" — " et in 
domibus suis frequenter soli cum muli- 
eribus quas ipsorum Marias (ut eorum 
verbis utamur) habitare non verentur." 
— Concil. Magdeburg, ann. 1403 Rubr. 
de Poenis. (Hartzheim Y. 717.) 

On the other hand, in the "Creed of 
Piers Ploughman," a Franciscan at- 
tacks the Carmelites — 

They been but jugulers, 
And japers of kyndej 
Lotels and lechures, 
And lemans holden. 
* * «- * 



And that wicked folk 
Wymmen betraietb, 
And begileth hem her good 
With glaverynge wordes, 
And therwith holden her hous 
In harlotes warkes. 

Wright's Edition, pp. 453-4. 

2 This was written in answer to an 
attack on celibacy by G-uillaume Saig- 
net, entitled a Lamentatio ob coelibatu 
sacerdotum, sive Dialogus Nicaenaa Con- 
stitutionis et Nature ea di re con queren- 
ts. " — Zaccaria, Storia Polemica del 
Celibato Sacro, Praaf. p. xiv. 

3 Yel inexperti forte erant hi doctores 
quam generale et quam radicatum sit 
hoc malum, et quod deteriora flagitia 
circa uxores aut filias parochianorum et 
abominationes horrendas in aliis proven- 
erint apud multas patrias, rebus stanti- 
bus ut stant, si quaerentur per tales 
censuras arceri. Scandalum certe mag- 
num est apud parochianos curati ad 
concubinam ingressus, sed longe deterius 
si erga parochianas suas non servaverit 
castitatem. — De Vita Spirit. Animas 
Lect. iv. Corol. xiv. prop. 3. 



23 



354 



EESULTS 



it was the custom to oblige a new pastor, on entering upon his func- 
tions, to select a concubine, as a necessary protection to the virtue 
of his female parishioners, and to the peace of the families intrusted 
to his spiritual direction. 1 Indeed, we have already seen, on the 
authority of the council of Palencia in 1322, that such a practice was 
not uncommon in Spain. 

In thus reviewing the influences which a nominally celibate clergy 
exercised over those intrusted to their care, it is perhaps scarcely too 
much to conclude that they were mainly responsible for the laxity of 
morals which is a characteristic of mediseval society. No one who 
has attentively examined the records left to us of that society, can 
call in question the extreme prevalence of the licentiousness which 
everywhere infected it. Christianity had arisen as the great reformer 
of a world utterly corrupt. How earnestly its reform was directed 
to correcting sexual immorality is visible in the persistence with 
which the Apostles condemned and forbade a sin that the Gentiles 
scarcely regarded as a sin. The early church was consequently pure, 
and its very asceticism is a measure of the energy of its protest 
against the all-pervading license which surrounded it. Its teachings, 
as we have seen, remained unchanged. Fornication continued to be 
a mortal sin, yet the period of its unquestioned domination over the 
conscience of Europe was the very period in which license among the 
Teutonic races was most unchecked. A church which, though founded 
on the Gospel, and wielding the illimitable power of the Roman 
hierarchy, could yet allow the feudal principle to extend to the "jus 
primse noctis" or "droit demarquette," and whose ministers in their 
character of temporal seigneurs could even occasionally claim the 
disgusting right themselves 2 was evidently exercising its influence not 
for good but for evil. 



1 De Statu. Kelig. Lib. I. (Giannone 
Apolog. cap. 14). 

2 There is a tradition that the Abbey 
of Montariol lost its sovereignty over 
the inhabitants of the village of that 
name in consequence of a revolt caused 
by the monks exacting this feudal right 
in all its odious cynicism, in place of 
receiving a payment in commutation as 
was frequently done. A lively contro- 
versy has arisen over the exactness of 
this tradition, and the Abbe Marcellin, 
in his edition of Le Bret's Histoire de 
Montauban seems to me to have suc- 
cessfully proved its falsity. He admits 



however, that in his researches on the 
subject he has found one case in which 
an ecclesiastic undertook to enforce his 
rights to the letter ; and the President 
Boyer, writing in the sixteenth century 
(Decisiones, No. 17 Decis. 297) asserts 
that he had seen the proceedings of a 
lawsuit in which " Bector seu curatus 
parochialis praetendebat ex consuetudme 
primam habere sponsse cognitionem " 
(Eschbach, Introduction a l'£tude du 
Droit, \ 174). In some remote portions 
of France the tribute was still exacted 
"en nature" by temporal seigneurs as 
late as the sixteenth century, as appears 
from documents printed by MM. Ma- 



RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH 



355 



There is no injustice in holding the church responsible for the lax 
morality of the laity. It had assumed the right to regulate the con- 
sciences of men and to make them account for every action and even 
for every thought. When it promptly caused the burning of those who 
ventured on any dissidence in doctrinal opinion or in matters of pure 
speculation, it could not plead lack of authority to control them in 
practical virtue. Its machinery was all-pervading, and its power 
autocratic. It had taught that the priest was to be venerated as the 
representative of God and that his commands were to be implicitly 
obeyed. It had armed him with the fearful weapon of the confes- 
sional, and by authorizing him to grant absolution and to pronounce 
excommunication, it had delegated to him the keys of heaven and 
hell. By removing him from the jurisdiction of the secular courts 
it had proclaimed him as superior to all temporal authority. Through 
ages of faith the populations had humbly received these teachings 
and bowed to these assumptions, until they entered into the texture 
of the daily life of every man. While thus grasping supremacy and 
using it to the utmost possibility of worldly advantage, the church 
therefore could not absolve itself from the responsibilities inseparably 
connected with power, and chief among these responsibilities is to be 
numbered the moral training of the nations thus subjected to its will. 
While the corruption of the teachers thus had necessarily entailed 
the corruption of the taught, it is not too much to say that the tire- 
less energy devoted to the acquisition and maintenance of power, 
privileges, and wealth, if properly directed, under all the advantages 
of the situation, would have sufficed to render mediseval society the 
purest that the world has ever seen. 

That the contrary was notoriously the case resulted naturally from 



zure et Hatoulet (Fors de Beam, p. 172). 
Velly (Hist, de France, Paris, 1770, T. 
III. p. 325) quotes from Lauriere a docu- 
ment of 1507 which, in recounting the 
privileges of the barony of Saint-Martin 
states that the Comte d'Eu has the 
" droit de prelibation" there, and Bou- 
taric (Droits Seigneuriaux, Toulouse, 
1775, p. 650) remarks that he has met 
nobles who pretended to possess the 
right, but that it had been abolished by 
the courts. In 1854 M. Bouthors, in 
his "Coutumes locales du bailliage 
d'Amiens," chanced to allude to a cus- 
tom by which the episcopal officers until 
1607 exacted a tribute from newly mar- 



ried couples for permission to pass to- 
gether the first three nights after the 
wedding — a custom growing out of the 
old droit de marquette. This aroused the 
ire of the faithful, and M. Louis Veuillot 
wrote a treatise in which he emphati- 
cally denied that such a right had ever 
existed, and a lively controversy arose 
on the subject. M. Lagreze (Hist, du 
Droit dans les Pyrenees, Paris, 1867, 
p. 390) has examined the matter thor- 
oughly and the proof which he accumu- 
lates of the existence of the right is 
indisputable, though he denies that it 
was ever claimed by ecclesiastics. 



356 



RESULTS. 



the fact that the church, after the long struggle which finally left it 
supreme over Europe, contented itself with the worldly advantages 
derivable from the wealth and authority which surpassed its wildest 
dreams. If, then, it could secure a verbal submission to its doctrines 
of purity, it was willing to issue countless commands of chastity 
and to tacitly connive at their perpetual infraction. The taint of 
corruption infected equally its own ministers and the peoples com- 
mitted to their charge, and the sacerdotal theory gradually came to 
regard with more and more indifference obedience to the Gospel in 
comparison with obedience to man and subservience to the temporal 
interests of the hierarchy. As absolution and indulgence grew to 
be a marketable commodity, it even became the interest of the traders 
in salvation to have a brisk demand for their wares. When infrac- 
tion of the Divine precepts could be redeemed with a few pence or 
with the performance of ceremonies that had lost their significance, 
it is not surprising if priest and people at length were led to look 
upon the violation of the Decalogue with the eye of the merchant 
and customer rather than with the spirit of the great Lawgiver. 1 

The first impulse in the reaction of the sixteenth century was to 
recur to the Gospel and to interpret its commands in accordance with 
the immutable principles of human conscience rather than with the 
cunningly devised subtleties of scholastic theology. The reformers 
thus stood face to face with God, and, needing no intermediary to 
negotiate with Him, vice and sin reappeared to them in all their 
hideous deformity and attended with all their inevitable consequences. 2 
For the first time since primitive Christianity was absorbed in sacer- 
dotalism, were the doctrines of morality enforced as the primal laws 



1 See the Taxae Sacrce Poenitentiarice, 
a tariff of prices for absolution in the 
Koman curia for all infractions of 
human and divine law, of which more 
hereafter. 

Heretically inclined reformers did 
not hesitate to accuse the clergy of thus 
speculating in the power of the keys 
and the sins of the people — 

The power of the apostles 
Thei pasen in speche, 
For to sellen the synnes 
For selver other mede. 
And purliche a poena 
The puple asoyleth, 
And a culpa also, 
That they may katchen 
Money other money-worth, 
And mede to fonge; 



And ben at lone and at bode, 
As burgeises useth. 
Thus they serven Sathanas, 
And soules bygyleth, 
Marchaunes of malisones, 
Mansede wrecches. 
Creed of Piers Ploughman, 1. 1417-32. 

2 The curious confusion of vice with 
religion, fostered by mediaeval sacer- 
dotalism, is well illustrated by the 
complaint which Erasmus puts in the 
mouth of theVirgin — "Et nonnumquam 
ea petunt a virgine quse verecundus 
juvenis vix , auderet petere a lena, 
quseque ne pudet Uteris committere" 
(Erasmi Colloq. Peregrinatio Keligi- 
onis). The existence of such incon- 
sistencies is one of the unfathomable 
mysteries of human intelligence. 



INFLUENCE OF MONACHISM. 357 

of man's being and of human society, and the world was made to 
see, by the energetic action of Puritan sects, that virtue was possible 
as the rule of life in large communities. We may smile at the eccen- 
tricities of Puritanism, but the rescue of modern civilization from 
the long heritage of ancient vice, and the decency which charac- 
terizes modern society, may fairly be attributed to the force of 
that fierce reaction against the splendid corruptions of the mediaeval 
church. 

In considering, however, the influence of the regular clergy, or 
monastic orders, we find a more complex array of motives and results. 
The earlier foundations of the West, as we have seen, to a great 
extent neutralized the inherent selfishness of monachism by the 
regulations which prescribed a due proportion of labor to be mingled 
with prayer. The duty which man owes to the world was to some 
extent recognized as not incompatible with the duty which he owed 
to his God, and civilization has had few more efficient instruments 
than the self-denying work of the earnest men who, from Columba 
to Adalbert, sowed the seeds of Christianity and culture among the 
frontier lands of Christendom. When discipline such as these men 
inculcated could be enforced, the benefits of monachism far out- 
weighed its evils. All the peaceful arts, from agriculture to music, 
owed to the Benedictines their preservation or their advancement, 
and it would be difficult to estimate exactly the influence for good 
which resulted from institutions to which the thoughtful and studious 
could safely retire from a turbulent and barbarous world. These 
institutions, however, from their own inherent defects, carried in 
them the germs of corruption. The claims to supereminent sanctity, 
which secured for them the privileges of asylums, were inevitably 
used as means for the accumulation of wealth wrung from the fears 
or superstition of the sinner. With wealth came the abandonment 
of labor ; and idleness and luxury were the prolific parents of license. 
True-hearted men were not wanting to combat the irrepressible evil. 
From Chrodegang to St. Vincent de Paul, the history of monachism — 
is full of illustrious names of those who devoted themselves to the 
mission of reforming abuses and restoring the ideal of the perfect 
monk, dead to the seductions of the world, and living only to do the 
work which he deems most acceptable to God. Many of these mis- 
takenly assumed that exaggerated mortification was the only gateway 
to salvation, and the only cure for the frightful immorality which 



358 RESULTS. 

pervaded so many monastic establishments. Others, with a truer 
insight into the living principles of Christianity, sought to turn the 
enthusiasm of their disciples to account in works of perennial mercy 
and charity, at a period when no other organizations existed for the 
succor of the helpless and miserable. 

Yet when we reflect how large a proportion of the wealth and 
intellect of Europe was absorbed in the religious houses, it will be 
seen that the system was a most cumbrous and imperfect one, which 
gave but a slender return for the magnitude of the means which it 
involved. Still, it was the only system existing, and possibly the 
only one which could exist in so rude a structure of society, indi- 
vidualized to a degree which destroyed all sense of public responsi- 
bility, and precluded all idea of a state created for the well-being of 
its component parts. Thus, the monastery became the shelter of 
the wayfarer, and the dispenser of alms to the needy. It was the 
principal school of the poor and humble ; and while the Universities 
of Oxford and Paris were devoting their energies to unprofitable 
dialectics and the subtle disputations of Aristotelian logic, in multi- 
tudes of abbey libraries quiet monks were multiplying priceless 
manuscripts, and preserving to after ages the treasures of the past. 
When fanciful asceticism did not forbid the healing of the sick, 
monks labored fearlessly in hospitals and pest-houses, and distributed 
among the many the benefactions which they had wrung from the 
late repentance of the few. As time wore on, even the religious 
teaching of the public passed almost exclusively into their hands, 
and to the followers of Dominic and Francis of Assisi the people 
owed such insight as they could obtain into the promises of the 
gospel. If the enthusiasm which prompted labors so strenuous did 
not shrink from lighting the fires of persecution, we must remember 
that religious zeal, accompanied by irresponsible power, has one 
invariable history. 

While thus, in various ways, the ascetic spirit led to institutions 
which promoted the progress of civilization, in others it necessarily 
had a directly opposite tendency. Nothing contributes more strongly 
to the extension of knowledge and of culture than the striving for 
material comfort and individual advancement in worldly well-being. 
Luxury and ambition thus have their uses in stimulating the inquir- 
ing and inventive faculties of man, in rendering the forces of nature 
subservient to our use, and in softening the rugged asperities which 
are incompatible with the regular administration of law. Every 



INFLUENCE OF ASCETICISM. 359 

instinct of human nature has its destined purpose in life, and the 
perfect man is to be found in the proportionate cultivation of each 
element of his character, not in the exaggerated development of 
those faculties which are deemed primarily good, nor in the entire 
repression of those which are evil only when their prominence de- 
stroys the balance of the whole. The ascetic selected for eradication 
one group of human aspirations, which was the most useful under 
proper discipline, and not perhaps the worst even in its ordinary 
excess. Only those who have studied the varied aspects of medi- 
aeval society can rightly estimate the enormous influence which the 
church possessed, in those ages of faith, to mould the average habits 
of thought in any desired direction. It can readily be seen that if 
the tireless preaching of the vanity of human things and the beati- 
tude of mortification occasionally produced such extravagances as 
those of the flagellants, the spirit which now and then burst forth 
in such eruption must have been an element of no little power in 
the forces which governed society at large, and must have exercised 
a most depressing influence in restraining the general advance of 
civilization. Not only did it thus more or less weigh down the 
efforts of almost every man, but the ardent minds that would other- 
wise have been leaders in the race of progress were the ones most 
likely, under the pervading spirit of the age, to be the foremost in 
maceration and self-denial ; while those who would not yield to the 
seduction were either silenced or wasted their wisdom on a genera- 
tion which believed too much to believe in them. When idleness 
was holy, earnest workers had little chance. 

The effect of monastic asceticism in moulding the character may 
be seen in the admiring picture drawn by a disciple in the fifteenth 
century of a shining light of the Carthusian order in the monastery 
of Vallis Dei, near Seez in Normandy. He had every virtue, he was 
an earnest reader and transcriber of MSS., and he practised mortifi- 
cations even greater than those prescribed by the severe rules of the 
order. He rarely slept on the couch provided for each brother, but 
passed his nights in prayer on the steps of the altar. In the hair 
shirt worn next his skin he cultivated lice and maggots so assiduously 
that they were often seen crawling over his face, and he scourged 
himself for every unhallowed wandering thought. He had preserved 
his virginity to old age, and his life had been passed in the church, 
yet in his daily confessions he accused himself of every sin possible 
to man, and he rigorously performed whatever penance was assigned 



360 KESULTS. 

to him. With all this maceration, the flesh would still assert itself, 
and he was tormented with evil desires which the sharp cords of the 
discipline failed to subdue. His office of procureur of the abbey 
required him to make frequent visits on business to the neighboring 
town, and he never left the gates of his retreat without lamenting 
and expressing the fear that he should not return to it the same as 
he left it. 1 If we consider what might have been effected by the 
energies of thousands of men such as this, had those energies not 
been absorbed in lifelong asceticism, we may conceive in some mea- 
sure the retardation of human progress wrought by the influence of 
monachism. 

Another result which may fairly be attributed to the ascetic teach- 
ings of the church is the slow growth of population during the medi- 
aeval period. Notwithstanding the gross and flagrant disregard of 
the rule, it was impossible to immure in convents men and women 
by the hundred thousand during successive generations without 
retarding greatly the rate of increase of the species. The rudeness 
of the arts and sciences, war, pestilence and famine were doubtless 
efficient causes, yet were they less efficient than enforced celibacy. 
This is evident when we see the rapid rate of growth established on 
the abrogation or even relaxation of the rule. The suppression of 
the monastic orders in France followed soon after the reforms by 
which Joseph II. discouraged them throughout the Austrian empire, 
and the result is visible in the enormous increase of European popu- 
lation which followed, notwithstanding the fearful destruction of life 
in the Napoleonic wars. It is calculated that in 1788 Europe num- 
bered 144,561,000 souls, which within fifty years had been aug- 
mented to 253,622,000, or about seventy-five per cent. Of late 
years the birth-rate has decreased in consequence of the severity of 
conscription in the military monarchies, but the enormous growth in 
the half-century following the French Revolution is the best com- 
mentary on the influences which for so many ages kept the popu- 
lation almost stationary. 2 

It required the unbelief of the fifteenth century to give free rein 
to the rising commercial energies and the craving for material im- 



1 Anon. Cartusiens. de Keligionum Orig. cap. 17-19 (Martene Ampl. Coll. 
VI. 40-46). 

2 See Lecky's History of nationalism. 



MONACHISM. 361 

provement that paved the way for the overthrow of ascetic sacer- 
dotalism. The fearful corruptions of the church, which indirectly 
caused and accompanied that awakening of the human mind, will be 
alluded to hereafter when we come to consider the movements lead- 
ing to the great Protestant Keformation. At present we must turn 
aside for a moment to consider one or two external developments 
of the religious activity of the Middle Ages. 



XXII. 
THE MILITARY ORDERS. 



The Military Orders were the natural expression of the singular 
admixture of religious and warlike enthusiasm, reacting on each 
other, which produced and was fostered by the Crusades. When 
bishops considered that they rendered a service acceptable to God in 
leading vast hosts to slaughter the Paynim, it was an easy transition 
for soldiers to turn monks, and to consecrate their swords to the 
bloody work of avenging their Redeemer. 

When the Hospitallers — Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, of 
Rhodes, or of Malta — first emerged from their humble position of 
ministering to the afflictions of their fellow-pilgrims, and commenced 
to assume a military organization under Raymond du Puy, about 
the year 1120, their statutes required the three ordinary monastic 
vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. 1 In fact, they were at 
first Benedictines ; but when they became numerous enough to form 
a separate body, they adopted the rule of St. Augustin. 

When the rule for the Templars — " Regula pauperum commili- 
tonum sanctee civitatis" — was adopted in 1128, at the council of 
Troyes, it contained no special injunction to administer a vow of 
celibacy, but the context shows that such a condition was understood 
as a matter of course. 2 Some little difficulty was evidently experi- 



1 Videlicet castitatem, obedientiam 
. . . atque vivere sine proprio. — Sta- 
tut. Ord. S. Jolian. Hierosol. Tit. I. 
I 1 (Liinig Cod. Ital. Diplom. T. II. 
p. 1743). 

2 Thus Cap. lv. : " Hoc enim injus- 
tum consideramus ut cum fratribus 
Deo castitatem promittentibus fratres 
hujusmodi in una eademque domo 
maneant." Cap. lvi. and lxxii., by 
the latter of which even the kiss of a 
mother was denied them, render evi- 
dent the extreme asceticism which was 
proposed by the founders of the order 



(Harduin. T. VI. P. n. pp. 1142, 
1146). 

At a subsequent period we learn that 
the Templar's oath of initiation prom- 
ised "obedientiam, castitatem, vivere 
sine proprio, et succurrere terrse sanctsa 
pro posse suo." It was, moreover, en- 
joined upon them not to enter a house 
in which a woman lay in child-bed, not 
to be present at the celebration of wed- 
dings or the purification of women, nor 
to receive any service from a woman, 
even water for washing the hands. — See 
the proceedings against them in 1309, 
inWilkins, II. 331 et seq. 



ORDERS OF THE TEMPLE AND OF ST. JAMES. 363 

enced at first, since, from the nature of the case, novices had to be 
trained warriors who must frequently have been bound by family 
ties, and whose education had not been such as to fit them for the 
restraints of their new life. It is probable also that the perpetual 
nature of the obligations assumed was not easy to be enforced upon 
the fierce members of the brotherhood, for, in 1183, Lucius III., in 
confirming the privileges of the order, specially commands that no 
one who enters it shall be allowed to return to the world. 1 

The history of these two orders is too well known to require it to 
be traced minutely here. If, with the growth of their reputation 
and wealth, the austere asceticism of their early days was lost, and 
if luxury and vice took the place of religious enthusiasm and sol- 
dierly devotion to the Cross, they but obeyed the universal law which 
in human institutions is so apt to render corruption the consequence 
of prosperity. One conclusion may be drawn, however, from the 
proceedings by which the powerful order of the Temple was extin- 
guished at the commencement of the fourteenth century. Notwith- 
standing the open and scandalous licentiousness of the order, it is a 
little singular that the interminable articles of accusation against the 
members contain no allusion to unchastity, while crimes most fan- 
tastic, practices most beastly, and charges most frivolous are heaped 
upon them in strange confusion. 2 As the object of those who con- 
ducted the prosecution was to excite a popular abhorrence that would 
justify the purposed spoliation, it is evident that the simple infraction 
of vows of chastity was regarded as so venial a fault and so much a 
matter of course that its proof could in no way serve the end of 
rousing indignation against the accused. 

It is somewhat remarkable that the same century which saw the 
foundation of the orders of the Hospital and Temple also witnessed 
one which, although bound by the rule of St. Augustin, and sub- 
jected to the ordinary vows of obedience, property in common, and 
inability to return to the world, yet allowed to its members the option 
of selecting either marriage or celibacy, and even of contracting sec- 
ond marriages. This was the Spanish Order of St. James of the 
Sword. What we have seen of the want of respect paid by the 
Spanish church to asceticism may lessen surprise at the founding of 
an order based upon such regulations, yet it is difficult to understand 



1 Kymer, Fcedera, I. 55. 

2 Wilkins II. 331-2.— Raynouard, Condamnation des Templiers, p. 83. 



364 



THE MILITARY ORDERS. 



how so great a violation of established principles could be sanctioned 
by Alexander III., who confirmed the order in 1175, 1 or by Inno- 
cent III. and Honorius III., who formally approved its privileges. 2 
Perhaps these military vassals of the pope, to whom they were bound 
in implicit obedience as their head, were too important a source of 
power and influence to be lightly rejected. Perhaps, also, Honorius 
III. may have quieted his conscience when, in confirming their 
charters in 1223, he commanded that their principal care and watch- 
fulness should be devoted to seeing that those who were married 
preserved conjugal fidelity, and that those who elected a single life 
maintained inviolable chastity. 

The example was one of evil import in the Peninsula. The 
Council of Valladolid in 1322 felt itself obliged to denounce under 
severe penalties the practice of dowering children with the possessions 
of the community, in which the military orders followed the precedent 
set them by the church. 3 During the universal license of the 
fifteenth century, when ascetic vows became a mockery, and the 
profligacy of those who took them exposed all such observances to 
contempt, the military orders formed no exception to the general 
shamelessness. In 1429 the council of Tortosa deplored the destruc- 
tion and waste of the temporal possessions of the religious knights 
from the general concubinage in which they indulged, and to effect a 
cure it promulgated regulations of peculiar severity, threatening with 
a liberal hand the penalties of excommunication and degradation. 4 
These proved as powerless as usual, and not long after a more 
sensible remedy was adopted by Eugenius IV. when he released the 
ancient and renowned Order of Calatrava from the obligation of 
celibacy, for reasons which would have led him to extend the privilege 
of marriage to the whole church, had the purity of ecclesiastics been 
truly the object of the rule. He recounts with sorrow the disorderly 
lives of the knights, and, quoting the text which says that it is better 
to marry than to burn, he grants the privilege of marriage because 
he deems it preferable to live with a wife than with a mistress. 5 
How could he avoid applying his own reasoning to the church in 
general ? 



1 Alexandri III. Epist. Append, in. 
No. 20 (Harduin. VI. P. II. p. 1557). 

2 Raynald. Annal. aim. 1210 No. 6, 
7; ann. 1223 No. 54; aim. 1496 No. 33. 

3 Concil Vallis-oletan. arm. 1322 
can vi. (Aguirre V. 243). 



4 Concil. Dertusan. ann. 1429 can. iii. 
(Harduin. VIII. 1076). 

5 Raynaldi Annal. ann. 1441 No. 20. 
— The Order of Calatrava was under 
the strictest of the rules, the Cistercian. 
(Giustiniani, Ordini Militari s. v.) 



PORTUGUESE ORDERS, 



365 



Similar arguments were employed to extend the same privilege to 
the Orders of Avis and of Jesus Christ, of Portugal. The former 
was founded in 1147 by Alfonso L, under the Cistercian rule, 
and chastity was one of its fundamental obligations ; l the latter was 
the continuation of the order of the Temple, which, preserved in 
Portugal by the humanity of King Dionysius, assumed in the four- 
teenth century the name of Jesus. Both institutions became in- 
curably corrupted; their preceptories were dens of avowed and 
scandalous prostitution, and their promiscuous amours filled the 
kingdom with hate and dissension. When at length, in 1496, King 
Emanuel applied to Alexander VI. to grant the privilege of marriage, 
in hopes of reforming the orders, it is interesting to observe how 
instinctively the minds of men turned to this as the sole efficient 
remedy for the immorality which all united in attributing to the 
hopeless attempt to enforce a purity impossible in the existing condi- 
tion of society. Alexander assented to the request, and bestowed on 
the orders the right of marriage on the same conditions as those 
enjoined on the Knights of St. James of the Sword. 2 It is true 
that Osorius doubts whether the benefits of the change were not 
exceeded by its evils, as he states that it lowered the character of the 
orders, opened the door to unworthy members, and led to the dissi- 
pation of their property. 3 

There was another Portuguese order of a somewhat different 
character. Twenty years after founding the Knights of Avis, 
Alfonso L, in 1167, to commemorate his miraculous victory over the 
Moors at Santarem, instituted the Order of St. Michael. The 
knights were allowed to marry once ; if widowed, they were obliged 
to embrace celibacy; and the Abbot of Alcobaca, who was the 
superior of the Order, was empowered to excommunicate them for 
irregularity of life, to compel them to give up their mistresses. 



1 Reg. Ord. Mil. Avisii a B. Joanne 
Cirita edita (Migne's Patrologia, T. 
188, p. 1669). 

2 Alexander's Bull declares that 
" Milites dictarum militiarumpro majori 
parte, continentise et castitatis voto, qui 
in eorum professione emittunt, con- 
tempto, concubinas etiam plures, et in 
eorum ac prteceptoriarum et prioratum 
dictarum militarum propriis domibus 
et locis, non sine magno religionis op- 
probrio, publice tenere et eis cohabitare, 



et etiam adulteria cum aliis mulieribus 
conjugatis committere non verentur: 
ex quo ab eorundem regnorum incolis 
et habitatoribus maximo odio habentur, 
dissensiones et inimicitise oriuntur, di- 
versa scandala quotidie concitantur 
etc." — Raynaldi Annal. ann. 1496 No. 

do. 

3 Osorii de Reb. Emmanuelis R. Lusi- 
tan. Lib. I. (Edit. Colon. 1574, p. 
12a.) 



366 



THE MILITARY ORDERS. 



They were moreover bound to perform the same religious exercises 
as lay brothers of the Cistercians. The Order is interesting as 
forming a curious link between the secular, religious, and military 
elements of the period. 1 

During all this, the knights of St. John adhered to their ancient 
statutes, and endeavored from time to time to reform the profligacy 
which seemed inseparable from the institution. When the ascetic 
Antonio Fluviano, who held the grand mastership from 1421 to 
1437, promulgated a regulation that any one guilty of public con- 
cubinage should receive three warnings, with severe penalties for 
contumacy, 2 it suggests a condition of morals by no means creditable 
to the brethren. So, a century later, the stern Yilliers de l'lsle- 
Adam was forced to declare that any one openly acknowledging an 
illegitimate child should be forever after incapacitated for office, 
benefice, or dignity. 3 What the knights were soon afterwards, the 
scandalous pages of Brantome sufficiently attest. 

The Marian or Teutonic Order, perhaps the most wealthy and 
powerful of all, was founded in 1190, and adopted the rule of the 
Templars as regards its religious government, with that of the 
Hospitallers to regulate its duties of charity and hospitality. For a 
full century of its existence it was sorely oppressed with poverty, 4 
but at length, when transferred from the Holy Land to Northeastern 
Germany, it bore a prominent part in Christianizing those regions, 
and what it won by the sword it retained possession of in its own 
right. With wealth came indolence and luxury, and the order 
became corrupt, as others had been. 5 Its history offers nothing of 
special interest to us until, in 1525, the grand master Albert of 
Brandenburg went over ' to Lutheranism with many of his knights, 
founded the hereditary dukedom of Prussia, and married — of which 
more hereafter. Those of the order who adhered to Catholicism 
maintained the organization on the rich possessions which the piety 
of ages had bestowed upon them throughout Germany, until this 
worn-out relic of the past disappeared in the convulsions of the 
Napoleonic wars. 



1 Patrologia, T. 188, p. 1674. 

2 Statut. Ord. S. Johan. Hierosol. 
Tit. xviii. I 50. 

3 Ibid. Tit. xviii. \ 51. 

4 See the supplication of Rodolph of 



Hapsburg to the Pope for assistance to 
the order. — Cod. Epist. Rodolphi I. 
No. xcix. (Lipsiss, 1806). 

5 Anon. Cartus. de Relig. Orig. cap- 
xxviii. (Martene Ampliss. Coll. YII- 
62). 



XXIII. 

THE HERESIES. 



Allusion has already been made to the introduction of Mani- 
chseism into Western Europe through Bulgaria and Lombardy. 
Notwithstanding its stern and unrelenting suppression wherever it 
was discovered during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, its votaries 
multiplied in secret. The disorders of the clergy, their oppression 
of the people, and their quarrels with the nobles over their temporal 
possessions made them many enemies among the laity ; and the 
simplicity of the Manichsean belief, its freedom from aspirations for 
temporal aggrandizement, and its denunciations of the immorality 
and grasping avidity of the priesthood, found for it an appreciative 
audience and made ready converts. Towards the close of the twelfth 
century the South of France was discovered to be filled with heretics, 
in whom the names of Cathari, Paterins, Albigenses, &c, concealed 
the more odious appellation of Manichseans. 

It is not our province to trace out in detail the bloody vicissitudes 
of Dominic's Inquisition and Simon de Montfort's crusades. It is 
sufficient for our purpose to indicate the identity of the Albigensian 
belief with that of the ancient sect which we have seen to exercise 
so powerful an influence in moulding and encouraging the asceticism 
of the early church. The Dualistic principle was fully recognized. 
No necessity was regarded as justifying the use of meat, or even of 
eggs and cheese, or in fact of anything which had its origin in animal 
propagation. Marriage was an abomination and a mortal sin, which 
could not be intensified by adultery or other excesses. 1 



1 Communis opinio Catharorum est 
quod matrimonium carnale fuit semper 
mortale peccatum, et quod non punietur 
quis gravius in futuro propter adulterium 
vel ineestum quam propter legitimum 
conjugium, nee etiam inter eos propter 
hoc aliquis gravius puniretur. — Summa 
F. Eenieri (Martene Thesaur. V. 
1761). 



This Eegnier describes himself as a 
heresiarch previous to his conversion, 
and his summary of the creed of his 
former associates may he regarded as 
correct in the main, though perhaps 
somewhat heightened in repulsiveness. 
For further details see ante, p. 208. 



368 THE HERESIES. 

Engrafted on these errors were others more practically dangerous, 
as they were the inevitable protest against the all-absorbing sacerdo- 
talism which by this time had become the distinguishing characteristic 
of the church. In denying the existence of purgatory, and the 
efficacy of prayers for the dead and the invocation of saints, a mortal 
blow was aimed against the system to which the church owed its 
firmest hold on the souls and purses of the people. In reviving the 
Hildebrandine doctrine that the sacraments were not to be admin- 
istered by ecclesiastics in a state of sin, and in exaggerating it into an 
incompatibility between sin and holding church preferment, a most 
dangerous and revolutionary turn was given to the wide-spread dis- 
content with which the excesses of the clergy were regarded. 1 So 
sure a hold, indeed, had such views upon the popular feeling, that 
we find them reappear with every heresy, transmitted with regular 
filiation through the Waldenses, the Wickliffites, and the Hussites, so 
that in every age, from Gregory to the Reformation, the measures 
with which he broke down the independence of the local clergy 
returned to plague their inventors. 

Yet with all this, the heretics to outward appearance long con- 
tinued unexceptionably orthodox. Industrious and sober, none were 
more devoted to all the observances of the church, none more 
regular at mass and confessional, more devout at the altar or more 
liberal at the offertory. Hidden beneath this fair seeming, their 
heresy was only the more dangerous, as it attracted converts with 
unexampled rapidity. Priests gave up their churches to join the 
society, wives left their husbands, and husbands abandoned their 
wives ; and when questioned as to their renunciation of the duties 
and privileges of marriage, they all professed to be bound with a vow 
of chastity. Yet if so ardent a combatant as St. Bernard is to be 
believed, their rigorous asceticism was only a cloak for libertinism. 
It is possible that the enthusiastic self-mortification of the sectaries 
led them to test their resolution by the dangerous experiments com- 
mon among the early Christians, and possibly also with the same 
deplorable results. St. Bernard at least argues that constant com- 
panionship of the sexes without sin would require a greater miracle 
than raisiug the dead, and as these heretics could not perform the 
lesser prodigy, it was reasonable to presume that they failed of the 



ORTHODOX EMBARRASSMENT. 



369 



greater — and his conclusion is not unlikely to be true. 1 Be this as it 
may, the virtue of these puritan sects rendered chastity dangerous to the 
orthodox, for the celebrated Peter Cantor relates as a fact within his own 
knowledge, that honest matrons who resisted the attempts of priests to 
seduce them were accused of Manichseism and condemned as heretics. 2 
The orthodox polemics, in controverting the exaggerated asceticism 
of these heretics, had a narrow and a difficult path to tread. Their 
own authorities had so exalted the praises of virgin purity, that it 
was not easy to meet the arguments of those who merely carried out 
the same principle somewhat further, in fearlessly following out the 
premises to their logical conclusion. 3 There is extant a curious tract, 
being a dialogue between a Catholic and a Paterin, in which the 
latter of course has the worst of the disputation, yet he presses his 
adversary hard with the texts which were customarily cited by the 
orthodox advocates of clerical celibacy — "qui habent uxores sint 
tanquam non habentes," "qui non reliquerit uxorem et filios propter 
me non est me dignus," &c. ; and the Catholic can only elude their 
force by giving to them metaphorical explanations very different from 
those which of old had been assumed in the canons requiring the 
separation of man and wife on ordination. 4 



1 Bernardi Serm. lxv. in Cantica, \\ 
4, 5. — " Cum femina semper esse et non 
cognoscere feminam, nonne plus est 
quam mortuum suscitare ? Quod minus 
est non potes ; et quod majus est vis 
credam tibi? Quotidie latus tuum ad 
latus juvenculee est in mensa; lectus 
tuus ad lectum ejus in camera, oculi tui 
ad illius oculos in colloquio, manus tuse 
ad manus ipsius in opere : et continens 
vis putari ? Esto ut sis ; sed ego sus- 
picione non careo." 

The morality of the age had evidently 
not impressed the Saint with the convic- 
tion of human power to resist temptation. 

2 Pet. Cantor. Verb. Abbreviat. cap. 
Ixxviii. 

8 Bishop Gerard, of Cambrai, confesses 
this in his refutation of the Artesian 
Manichseans in 1025 — " De quibus nos 
respohsuros quodam discretionis guber- 
naculo nostri sermonis carinam subire 
oportet, ne quasi inter duos scopulos 
naufragium incurrentes, occasionem 
demus in alterutrum, scilicet aut omnes 
indiscrete a conjugiis exterrendo, aut 
omnes indiscrete ad connubia common- 
endo." — Concil. Atrebatens. ann. 1025 
cap. x. (Hartzheim III. 89). 



When St. Bernard, in his fiery de- 
nunciation of the Manichsean errors, 
exclaimed, "non advertant qualiter 
omni immunditise laxat habenas qui 
nuptias damnat" (In Cantica Serm. 
lxvi. $ 3), he did not pause to reflect 
how severe a sentence he was passing 
on the saints of the fifth century who, 
as we have seen, would only admit 
marriage to be a pardonable offence. 

4 Disputat. inter Cathol. et Paterin. 
c. ii. (Martene Thesaur. V. 1712-13). 

It is somewhat singular that Ma- 
nicheeism should have been attributed 
to a sect of heretics in Bosnia who styled 
themselves Christians, and who were 
brought back to the fold in 1203 by a 
legate of Innocent III. It would ap- 
pear that, so far from entertaining Ma- 
nichsean doctrines, neglect of ecclesias- 
tical celibacy was actually one of their 
erroneous practices, for in their pledge 
of reformation they promise that sepa- 
ration of man and wife shall thenceforth 
be enforced ' ' neque de csetero recipiemus 
aliquem vel aliquam conjugatum, nisi 
mutuo consensu, continentia promissa, 
ambo pariter convertantur." — Batthy- 
ani, II. 293. 



24 



370 THE HEKESIES. 

The stubborn resistance of the Albigenses to the enormous odds 
brought against them shows the unconquerable vitality of the anti- 
sacerdotal spirit which was then so widely diffused throughout 
Southern Europe. In a different shape it had already manifested 
itself during the first half of the twelfth century, when Pierre de 
Bruys infected all the South of France with the heresy called, after 
him and his most noted follower, the Petrobrusian or Henrician. 
This was an uncompromising revolt against the whole system of 
Roman Christianity. It not only abrogated psedo-baptism, and pro- 
mulgated heretical notions respecting the Eucharist, but it abolished 
the visible symbols and ceremonies which formed so large a portion 
of the sacerdotal fabric — churches, crucifixes, chanting, fasting, gifts 
and offerings for the dead, and even the mass. But little is known 
respecting the Petrobrusians, except what can be derived from the 
refutation of their errors by Peter the Venerable. He says nothing 
specifically respecting their views upon ascetic celibacy, but we may 
assume that this was one of the doctrinal and practical corruptions 
which they assailed, from a passage in which, describing their excesses, 
he complains of the public eating of flesh on Passion Sunday, the 
cruel flagellation of priests, the imprisonment of monks, and their 
being forced to marry by threats and torments. Even after de Bruys 
was burned alive in 1146, his disciple, Henry, boldly carried on the 
contest, and the papal legate, Cardinal Alberic, sent for St. Bernard 
to assist him in suppressing the heretics. The latter, in a letter 
written in 1147 to the Count of Toulouse, describes the religious 
condition of his territories as most deplorable in consequence of the 
prevalence of the heresy — the churches were without congregations, 
the pastors without flocks, the people without pastors, the sacraments 
without reverence, the dying without consolation, and the new-born 
without baptism. Even making allowance for some exaggeration in 
all this, there can be no doubt that the heresy received extensive 
popular support and that it was professed publicly without disguise. 
At Alby it was dominant, so that when the Cardinal-legate went 
there, the people received him in derision with asses and drums, and 
when he preached, scarce thirty persons assembled to hear him ; but 
two days later St. Bernard so affected them with his eloquence that 
they renounced their errors. He was less successful at Vertfeuil 
where resided a hundred knights-banneret, who refused to listen to 
him, and whom he cursed in consequence, whereof they all perished 
miserably. Though St. Bernard was forced to return to Clairvaux 



ANTI-SACEKDOTAL HERESIES 



371 



without accomplishing the extirpation of the heresy, Henry was 
finally captured, and probably died in prison. 1 

In Britanny, about the same period, there existed an obscure sect 
concerning whom little is known, except that they were probably a 
branch of the Petrobrusians. Their errors were nearly the same, 
and the slender traces left of them show that their doctrine was a 
protest against the overwhelming sacerdotalism of the period. The 
papal legate, Hugh, Archbishop of Eouen, sought to convert them 
by an elaborate denunciation of their tenets, among which he 
enumerates promiscuous licentiousness and disregard of clerical 
celibacy. Daniel, he gravely assures them, symbolizes virginity ; 
Noah, continence ; and Job, marriage. Then, quoting Ezekiel xiv. 
13-20, wherein Jehovah, threatening the land with destruction, says, 
" Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they 
should deliver but their own souls through their righteousness," he 
proceeds triumphantly to the conclusion that recantation alone can 
save his adversaries from the fate which their errors have deserved. 2 

It was probably another branch of the same sect which was dis- 
covered at Liege in 1144, described as brought thither from the south 
and pervading all France and the neighboring countries. Its fol- 
lowers denied the efficacy of baptism, of the Eucharist and of the 
imposition of hands; they rejected not only oaths and vows, but 
marriage itself, and denied that the Holy Spirit could be gained 
except through good works. These heretics, however, had not in 
them the spirit of martyrdom, and speedily recanted on being dis- 
covered. 3 

Connected probably in some way with these movements of insub- 
ordination, was the career of the singular heresiarch, Eon de l'Etoile. 
During one of the epidemics of maceration and fanaticism which form 
such curious episodes in medieval history, Eon, born of a noble 



1 S. Petri Venerab. contra Petrobru- 
sianos. — S. Bernardi Epist. 241. — 
Ejusd. Vit. Prim. Lib. vi. Part iii. c. 
10. — Gruill. de Podio-Laurent. c. i. — 
Alberic. Trium-Font. Chron. arm. 1148. 

2 Hugon. Rothomag. contra Hseret. 
Lib. in. cap. vi. This is by no means 
an unusual specimen of the inconse- 
quential character of mediaeval polemics. 
Archbishop Hugh was a man of mark 
among his contemporaries, both as a 
theologian and as a statesman. It was 
he who, in 1139, at the council of 
"Winchester, saved King Stephen from 



excommunication by the English bish- 
ops. (Willelmi Malmesb. Hist. Novell. 
Lib. ii. | 26. ) For a somewhat similar 
specimen of fanciful theology, the 
reader may consult the exposition of 
the esoteric meaning of the plagues of 
Egypt by St. Martin of Leon, a writer 
of the twelfth century. — S. Martin. 
Legionens. Serm. xv. 

3 Epist. ad Lucium PP. Epist. 4. 
(Migne's Patrologia, T. CLXXIX. 
p. 957.)— Of. Martene Ampliss. Collect. 
I. 177. 



372 



THE HERESIES, 



Breton family, abandoned himself to the savage life of a hermit in 
the wilderness. Drawn by a vision to attend divine service, his 
excited mysticism caught the words which ended the recitation of 
the collect, "Per eum qui venturus est judicare vivos etmortuos;" 
and the resemblance of "eum" with his own name inspired him with 
the revelation that he was the Son of God. Men's minds were 
ready for any extravagance, and Eon soon had disciples who adored 
him as a deity incarnate. Nothing can be wilder than the tales 
which are related of him by eye-witnesses — the aureole of glory 
which surrounded him, the countless wealth which was at the disposal 
of his followers, the rich but unsubstantial banquets which were 
served at his bidding by invisible hands, the superhuman velocity of 
his movements when eluding those who were bent on his capture. 
Eon declared war upon the churches which monopolized the wealth 
of the people while neglecting the duties for which they had been 
enriched ; and he pillaged them of their treasures, which he distributed 
lavishly to the poor. At last the Devil abandoned his protege. 
Eon, when his time had come, was easily taken and carried before 
Eugenius III. at the Council of Rouen, in 1148. There he boldly 
proclaimed his mission and his power. Exhibiting a forked staff 
which he carried, he declared that when he held it with the fork 
upwards, God ruled heaven and hell, and he governed the earth ; but 
that when he reversed its position, then he had at command two- 
thirds of the universe, and left only the remaining third to God. 
He was pronounced hopelessly insane, but this would not have saved 
him had not his captor, the Archbishop of Rheims, represented that 
his life had been pledged to him on his surrender. He was there- 
fore, delivered to Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, to be imprisoned, and 
he soon afterwards died. Even this did not shake the faith of his 
disciples. Many of them, in their fierce fanaticism, preferred the 
stake to recantation, and numbers of them were thus put to death 
before the heresy could be extinguished. 1 



When, about the middle of the twelfth century, the sudden death 
of a companion so impressed Peter Waldo of Lyons that he dis- 



1 G-uillielm. de Newburgh, Lib. I. 
cap. 19. — Ottonis Prising, de Gest. 
Frid. I. Lib. i. cap. liv., lv. — Sigeberti 
Chron. Continual. Gemblac. ann. 1146. 
— Ejusdem Continuat. Prsemonstrat. 
ann. 1148. — Boberti de Monte Chron. 



ann. 1148. — The detailed account given 
by William of Newburgh he professes 
to have gathered from some of Eon's 
followers performing penitential pil- 
grimages after the death of the heresi- 
arch. 



ANTISACERDOTALISM — THE WALDENSES 



373 



tributed his fortune among the poor, and devoted himself to preaching 
the supereminent merits of poverty, nothing was further from his 
thoughts than the founding of a new heresy. Ardent disciples 
gathered around him, disseminating his views, which spread with 
rapidity; but their intention was to establish a society within the 
church, and they applied, between 1181 and 1185, to Lucius III. 
for the papal authorization. Lucius, however, took exception to 
their going barefoot, to their neglect of the tonsure, and to their 
retaining the society of women. They were stubborn, and he con- 
demned them as heretics. 1 The enthusiasm which the church might 
have turned to so much account, as it subsequently did that of the 
Franciscans and Dominicans, was thus diverted to unorthodox chan- 
nels, and speedily arrayed itself in opposition. The character of the 
revolt is shown in a passage of the Nobla Leyezon, written probably 
not long after this time, which declares that all the popes, cardinals, 
bishops, and abbots together cannot obtain pardon for a single mortal 
sin; thus leading directly to the conclusion that no intercessor could 
be of avail between God and man — 

Ma yo aus o dire, car se troba en ver, 

Que tuit li papa que foron de Silvestre entro en aquest, 

Et tuit li cardinal et tuit li vesque e tuit li aba, 

Tuit aquisti ensemp non ban tan de potesta, 

Que ilb poissan perdonar un sol pecca mortal. 

Solament Dio perdona, que autre non bo po far. 2 

Still, they did not even yet consider themselves as separated from 
the church, for they consented to submit their peculiar doctrines to 
the chances of a disputation, presided over by an orthodox priest. 
Of course, the decision went against them, and a portion of the 
"Poor Men of Lyons" submitted to the result. The remainder, 
however, maintained their faith as rigidly as ever. From Bernard 



1 Conrad. Urspergens. ann. 1212. — 
"Hoc quoque probrosum in eis vide- 
batur, quod viri et mulieres simul 
ambulabant in via, et plerumque si- 
mul manebant in una domo, ut de eis 
diceretur, quod quandoque simul in 
lectulis accubabant." The follies of 
the early Christians were doubtless 
imitated by the new sectaries. As 
early as 1197 we find them denounced 
as heretics, under the various names of 
"Waldenses, Poor Men of Lyons, and 
Sabatati, and condemned to the stake 



by the council of Girona, in Aragon. 
— Aguirre V. 103. 

2 La Nobla Leyczon, 408-13.— 
There has been considerable discussion 
as to the date of this work. It appears 
to me to bear the mark of more than 
one period, or, at least, of successive 
recensions. Internal evidence shows 
the beginning to have been written 
about the year 1100, while the later 
portion, commencing about 1. 345, 
seems to have been composed subse- 
quently to the persecutions of the early 
part of the 13th century. 



374 THE HEEESIES. 

de Font-Cauld, who records this disputation, and from Alain de 
l'lsle, another contemporary, who wrote in confutation of their 
errors, we have a minute account of their peculiarities of belief. 
Their principal heresy was a strict adherence to the Hildebrandine 
doctrine that neither reverence nor obedience was due to priests in 
mortal sin, whose ministrations to the living and whose prayers for 
the dead were equally to be despised. In the existing condition of 
sacerdotal morals, this necessarily destroyed all reverence for the 
church at large, and Bernard and Alain had no hesitation in proving 
it to be most dangerously heterodox. Their recurrence to Scripture, 
moreover, as the sole foundation of Christian belief, with the claim 
of private interpretation, was necessarily destructive to all the forms 
of sacerdotalism, and led them to entertain many other heretical 
tenets. They admitted no distinction between clergy and laity. 
Every member of the sect, male or female, was a priest, entitled to 
preach and to hear confessions. Purgatory was denied, and the 
power of absolution derided. Lying and swearing were mortal 
sins, and homicide was not excusable under any circumstances. 1 
Yet naturally they did not repudiate the ascetic principles of the 
church, and they regarded continence as counselled, though not 
commanded, by the Christian dispensation — 

La ley velha maudi lo ventre que fruc non a porta, 
Ma la novella conselha gardar vergeneta. 2 

Though marriage is praised and its purity is to be preserved — 
Gardes ferm lo matrimoni, aquel noble convent, 3 

thus showing their disapproval of the Manichsean doctrines of the 
Cathari and Paterins. 

Independence such as this could only result in open revolt against 
sacerdotalism in general, and it shortly came. The Waldensian 
exaltation of poverty was grateful to the nobles, who were eager to 
grasp the possessions of the church; its condemnation of the pride 
and immorality of the clergy secured for its sectaries the goodwill of 
the people, who everywhere suffered from the oppression and vices 
of their pastors. Under such protection the sect multiplied with 
incredible rapidity, not only throughout France, but in Italy and 
Germany. Enveloped, with the Albigenses, in merciless perse- 



1 Bernardi Fontis Calidi Lib. contra 
"Waldenses. — Alani de Insulis contra 
Hseret. Lib. II. 



2 La Nobla Leyczon, 242-3. 

3 Ibid., 88. 



THE WALDENSES — THE FRATICELLI. 375 

cution, they endured with fortitude the extremity of martyrdom. 
The Germans and Italians sought refuge in the recesses of the Alpine 
valleys, and in the Marches of Brandenburg and Bohemia, where 
they seem to have adopted the custom of sacerdotal marriage, and 
where in time they merged with the churches of the Orthodox Breth- 
ren. 1 Some feeble remnants also managed to maintain an obscure 
existence in Provence, but their tacit revolt could not be forgotten 
or forgiven, and at intervals they were exposed to pitiless attempts 
at extermination. These are well known, and the names of Cabri- 
eres and Merindol have acquired a sinister notoriety which renders 
further allusion to the Waldenses unnecessary, except to mention 
that in 1538 they formally merged themselves with the German 
reformers by an agreement of which the 8th and 9th articles declare 
that marriage is permissible, without exception of position, to all 
who have not received the gift of continence. 2 

The antisacerdotal spirit, however, did not develop itself altogether 
in opposition to the church. Devout and earnest men there were, 
who recognized the evil resulting from the overgrown power and 
wealth of the ecclesiastical establishment, without shaking off their 
reverence for its doctrine and its visible head, and the authorities at 
length saw in these men the effective means of combating the enemy. 
In thus availing themselves of one branch of the reformers to destroy 
the other and more radical portion, the chiefs of the hierarchy were 
adopting an expedient effective for the present, yet fraught with 
danger for the future. The Franciscans and Dominicans were useful 
beyond expectation. They restored to the church much of the pop- 
ular veneration which had become almost hopelessly alienated from 
it, and their wonderfully rapid extension throughout Europe shows 
how universally the people had felt the want of a religion which 
should fitly represent the humility, the poverty, the charity of Christ. 
Yet when Innocent III. hesitated long to sanction the mendicant 
orders, he by no means showed the want of sagacity which has been 
so generally asserted by superficial historians; rather, like Lucius 
III. with the Waldenses, his far-seeing eye took in the possible 
dangers of that fierce ascetic enthusiasm which might at any moment 
break the bonds of earthly obedience, when its exalted convictions 
should declare that obedience to man was revolt against God. 

1 Camerarii Hist, de Fratrum Orthodox. Ecclesiis pp. 104-7, 116-7. 

2 Pluquet, Dictionnaire des Heresies, art. Vaudois. 



376 



THE HEEESIES. 



Before the century was out, the result was apparent. When St. 
Francis erected poverty into an object of adoration, attaching to it 
an importance as insane as that attributed to virginity by the early 
ascetics, he at once placed himself in opposition to the whole system 
of the church establishment, though his exquisite humility and ex- 
haustless charity might disguise the dangerous tendency of his doc- 
trines. 1 As his order grew in numbers and wealth with unexampled 
rapidity, it necessarily declined from the superhuman height of self- 
abnegation of which its founder was the model. Already, in 1261, 
the council of Mainz can hardly find words severe enough to con- 
demn the mendicant friars who wandered around selling indulgences 
and squandering their unhallowed gains in the vilest excesses. One 
of these lights of the order publicly preached, in the horse-market 
of Strassburg, the doctrine that a nun who surrendered her virtue 
to a monk was less guilty than if she had an intrigue with a layman. 2 
This falling from grace naturally produced dissatisfaction among those 
impracticable spirits who still regarded St. Francis as their exemplar 
as well as their patron. The breach gradually widened, until at 
length two parties were formed in the order. The ascetics finally 
separated themselves from their corrupted brethren, and under the 
name of Begghards in Germany, Frerots in France, and Fraticelli 
in Southern Europe, assumed the position of being the only true 
church. Their excommunication at the council of Yienne, in 1311, 
in no wise disconcerted them. The long-forgotten doctrines of 
Arnold of Brescia were revived and intensified. Poverty was an 
absolute necessity to true Christianity ; the holding of property was 
a heresy, and the Roman church was consequently heretic. Rome, 
indeed, was openly denounced as the modern Babylon. 



1 The heresy of one age becomes 
the orthodoxy of another. The views 
of St. Francis, when promulgated in 
the fifth century by the Timotheists, 
were stigmatized as heretical. — v. 
Harduin. Concil. I. 525. 

2 Concil. Mogunt. ann. 1261 can. 
xlviii. (Hartzheim III. 612, 615). 

The decline of the order from the 
asceticism of its founder afforded a 
fair mark for satire — 

Seyn that they folwen 
Fully Fraunceyses rewle, 
That in cotinge of his cope 
Is more cloth y-folden 
Than was in Fraunceis froc 
When he hem first made. 



And yet under that cope 
A cote hathe he furred 
With foyns or with fichewes 
Other fyn bevere, 
And that is cutted to the kne, 
And queyntly y-botened, 
Lest any spiritual man 
Aspie that gyle. 
Fraunceys bad his brethern 
Bar-fot to wenden; 
Now ban they buckled shone, 
For blenyng of her heles, 
And hosen in hard weder 
Y-hamled by the ancle, 
And spicerie sprad in her purs 
To parten where hem luste. 

Creed of Piers Ploughman 1. 579-600. 



THE FEATICELLI. 



377 



While thus carrying out to its necessary consequences the sanctifi- 
cation of poverty, which was the essence of Franciscanism, they 
were equally logical with regard to the doctrines of ascetic purity 
which had been so earnestly enforced by the church. Their admira- 
tion of virginity thus trenched closely on Manichgeism, and in com- 
bating their errors the church was scarcely able to avoid condemning 
both the vow of poverty and that of celibacy, which were the corner- 
stones of the monastic theory. 1 Active persecution, of course, 
aroused equally active resistance. The Fraticelli espoused the cause 
of the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, in his long and disastrous quarrel 
with John XXII., whom they did not hesitate to excommunicate. 
Exterminated after a prolonged and desperate struggle, their mem- 
ory was blackened with the slanders disseminated by a priesthood 
incapable of emulating their ascetic virtues; and principal among 
these slanders was the accusation which we find repeated on all occa- 
sions when an adversary is to be rendered odious — that of promiscu- 
ous and brutal licentiousness. No authentic facts, however, can be 
found to substantiate it. 2 

The Fraticelli form a connecting link in the generations of heresy. 
Their errors, as taught by one of their most noted leaders, Walter 
Lolhard, who was burned at Cologne in 1322, had a tinge of the 
Manichaeism of the Albigenses, for Satan was to them an object of 
compassion and veneration. 3 Their prevalence in Bohemia prepared 



1 Thus, a council held at Cologne in 
1306, in denouncing the mendicancy 
of the Begghards, quotes Gen. III. 18 : 
u In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane 
tuo," and proceeds: "Quod ad fortes 
et sui compotes moraliter intelligitur 
esse dictum: et tales in ocio victum 
vendicantes, eleemosynas rapiunt, 
quse infirmis et debilibus fuerant pau- 
peribus ministrandse. " And in ob- 
jecting to their views of celibacy, 
"Ajunt etiam: Nisi mulier virgini- 
tatem in matrimonio deperditam doleat 
et dolendo deploret, salvari non potest : 
quasi matrimonium sit peccatum, cum 
tamen ipsum ante peccatum in loco 
sancto a sanctorum sanctissimo fuerit 
institutum: quse virginitas in foetum 
sobolis compensatur, per quam humana 
natura stabilitate perdurat," which con- 
trasts strangely with the teachings 
quoted above from " Hali Meidenhad." 
Great stress, moreover, is laid upon the 
indissolubility of the marriage vow and 
the wickedness of separating husband 
and wife : — " Quomodo spiritu Dei 



agantur qui contra spiritum Dei 
agunt, prohibentis virum ab uxore, 
et e converso sine causa dimitti?" 
— Concil. Coloniens. ann. 1306 cap. i., 
ii. (Hartzheim IV. 100-101). The 
good fathers of the council were dis- 
creetly blind to the antagonism of 
their teachings to the received doc- 
trines and practices of the church. 

2 A collection of documents illus- 
trating the history of this singular 
and powerful sect will be found in 
Baluze and Mansi III. 206 et seq. 

How persistent and profound was the 
conviction which created the heresy is 
shown by its prolonged existence. 
Even as late as 1421 Martin V. found 
it necessary to issue a Bull denouncing 
it (Kaynaldi Annal. ann. 1421 No. 4); 
and in Germany the council of Wurz- 
burg in 1446 revived the old denunci- 
ations against the Begghards and 
Beguines (Hartzheim V. 336). 

3 Their customary salutation and 
password was an invocation of the 



878 



THE HEKESIES. 



the ground for Huss, and left deep traces in the popular mind which 
were not eradicated in the eighteenth century ; while their proselytes 
in England served to swell the party of Wickliffe, and eventually 
gave to it their name, though their peculiar doctrines bore little 
resemblance to his. 1 Antisacerdotalism, however, was the common 
tie, and in this Luther, Zwingli, and Knox were the legitimate suc- 
cessors of Dolcino and Michael di Cesena. 

Another precursor of Wickliffe and Huss was John of Pirna, who 
in 1341 taught the most revolutionary doctrines. According to him, 
the pope was Antichrist and Rome was the whore of Babylon and 
the church of Satan. The Silesians listened eagerly to his denunci- 
ations of the clergy, and the citizens of Breslau, with their magis- 
trates, openly embraced his heresy. When the Inquisitor, John of 
Schweidnitz, was sent thither by the Holy Office of Cracow, the 
people rose in defence of their leader and put the Inquisitor to death. 
John of Pirna appears to have maintained his position, but after his 
death the church enjoyed the pious satisfaction of exhuming his body, 
burning it, and scattering the ashes to the winds. 2 It was easier to 
do this than to destroy the leaven which was working everywhere in 
men's minds. No sooner were its manifestations repressed in one 
quarter than they displayed themselves in another. 

In the ineradicable corruption of the church, indeed, every effort 
to purify it could only lead to a heresy. Except on the delicate 
point of Transsubstantiation, Wickliffe proposed no doctrinal inno- 
vation, but he keenly felt and energetically sought to repress the 
disorders which had brought the church into disrepute. His scheme 
swept away bishop, cardinal, and pope, the priesthood being the cul- 
minating point in his system of ecclesiastical polity. The tempo- 
ralities which weighed down the spiritual aspirations of the church 
were to be abandoned, and with them the train of abuses by which 
the worldly ambition of churchmen was sustained — indulgences, 
simony, image-worship, the power of excommunication, and the 
thousand other arts by which the authority to bind and to loose had 
been converted into broad acres or current coin of the realm. In 
all this he was to a great extent a disciple of the Fraticelli, but his 



fallen angel — " Salutet te injuriam 
passus. " — "May the wronged one 
preserve thee ! ' ' — Trithem. Chron. 
Hirsaug. ann. 1315. 

1 Trithem. loc. cit. — Baynaldi An- 



nal. ann. 1318 No. 44. — Hartzheim 
Concil. G-erman. IV. 630. 

2 Krasinski, Eeformation in Poland, 
I. 55-56. 



WICKLIFFE, 



379 



more practical mind escaped their leading error, and he denounced 
as an intolerable abuse the beggary of the mendicant friars. Indeed, 
the monastic orders in general were the objects of his special aver- 
sion, as having no justification in the precepts of Christ, and his 
repeated attacks upon them have a bitterness which shows not only 
his deep-rooted aversion, but his sense of their importance as a bul- 
wark of the abuses which he assailed. 1 He reduced holy orders to 
t wo — the priesthood and diaconate — but he maintained the indelible 
character of ordination as separating the recipient from his fellows, 
and he urged that all ministers of Christ should live in saintly pov- 
erty. 2 All this was unreasonable enough in a perverse and stiff- 
necked generation, but his unpardonable error was his revival of the 
doctrine of Gregory VII. regarding the ministrations of unfaithful 
priests, which he carried out resolutely to its logical consequences. 3 
According to him, a wicked priest could not perform his sacred 
functions, and forfeited both his spiritualities and temporalities, of 
which laymen were justified in depriving him. Nay more, priest 
and bishop were no longer priest or bishop if they lived in mortal 
sin, and his definition of mortal sin was such as to render it scarce 
possible for any one to escape. 4 

What his opinions were on the subject of clerical celibacy was a 
mooted point even shortly after his death. Thomas of Walden, the 
confessor of Henry V., in his Doctrinale Fidei, written to confute 



1 Inter omnia monstra quae unquam 
intraverunt ecclesiam, monstrum ho- 
rum fratrum est seductivius, infunda- 
bilius, et a veritate ac a charitate 
distantius. — Univ. Oxon. Litt. de 
Error. Wicklif. Art. 103 (Wilkins 
III. 344). 

2 Trialogi Lib. IV. cap. 15. 

3 A Wickliffite tract ("De Officio 
Pastorali," published by Prof. Lechler, 
Leipzig, 1863) takes strong ground on 
this point. Speaking of unchaste priests, 
it says (P. I. cap. viii. pp. 16-17), 
" Talis sic notorie sustentans curatum 
dat imprudcnter elemosinam contra 
Christum .... periculosum peccatum 
est crimini consentire; sed sic faciunt 
qui taliter curato in temporalibus sub- 
ministrant. " And again (P. I. cap. 
xvii.), " Subditi enim non debent au- 
dire missam talium sacerdotum, et per 
consequens non debent dare sibi oblaci* 
ones vel decimas, ne videantur consen- 
cientes crimini sic notorio in curatis." 



* Si Deus est, domini temporales 
possunt legitime ac meritorie auferre 
bona fortunse ab ecclesia delinquente. 
— Conclus. Magist. Johan. "Wycliff. 
Art. vi. (Wilkins III. 123). 

Licet regibus auferre temporalia a 
viris ecclesiasticis ipsis abutentibus 
habitualiter. Ibid. Art. xvii. 

So in the proceedings conducted by 
Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
against Wicklifle in 1382, among the 
articles presented as extracted from 
his writings were — 

Art. 4. Quod si episcopus vel sa- 
cerdos existat in peccato mortali, non 
ordinat, consecrat nee baptizat. 

Art. 16. Quod nullus est dominus 
civilis, nullus est episcopus, nullus 
est prselatus dum est in peccato mor- 
tali (Wilkins III. 157). 

Even "verbum otiosum" and " ira 
quantumlibet levis" were denounced 
by him as mortal sins according to the 
University of Oxford. — Litt. de Error. 
Art. 210, 211 (Wilkins III. 347). 



380 



THE HERESIES. 



the errors of Lollardry, declares that he could not persuade himself 
that the Wickliffites derived from their leader their opposition to 
celibacy until he had recently read in Wickliffe's Sermon on Mid- 
summer Eve the passage which says that "prestis ben dowid and 
wyflees agens Goddis autorite. . . . And this is the caste of the 
fend to kyndle fir in heerdis" &C., 1 and Mr. Arnold, the latest editor 
of Wickliffe, seems to entertain no doubt as to the authenticity of 
the text, or of the views of the reformer as expressed there, and 
in other passages of tracts attributed to him. 2 Yet had Wickliffe 
taught this doctrine it would have been as widely known as his other 
errors, it would have been condemned in the repeated proceedings 
taken against him and his teachings, and it would not have been left 
for Thomas of Walden to discover it in one of the numerous sermons 
which passed from hand to hand as the works of the heresiarch. 
Wickliffe was too earnest and sincere in his convictions to leave any- 
one in doubt as to his belief on any point that he thought worth 
discussion. 

What his views were on this subject can perhaps best be sought in 
the most mature of his works, the Trialogus, the authenticity of 
which I believe is indisputable. No one can read the chapters on 
Sensuality and Chastity without seeing that the whole line of argu- 
ment is directed towards proving the superiority of virginity over 
marriage, even to the fanciful etymology of "coelibatus" from the 
state of the "beati in cselo;" while in the chapter on the riches of 
the clergy, they are regarded as virgins betrothed to Christ, and the 
vow of chastity which they take is likened to their similar vow of 
poverty, and not to be infringed. 3 Wickliffe's austerity, in fact, was 
deeply tinged with asceticism, and in aiming to restore the primitive 



1 Arnold's Select English Works of 
John Wyclif, Vol. II. p. v.— Vol. I. 
p. 364. 

2 "God ordeyned prestis in the olde 
lawe to have wyves, and nevere forbede 
it in the newe lawe, neither bi Crist ne 
bi his apostlis, but rathere aprovede it. 
But now, bi ypocrisie of fendis and fals 
men, manye binden hem to presthod 
and chastite, and forsaken wins bi 
Goddis lawe, and schenden maydenes 
and wins and fallen foulest of aile. ' ' — 
Of Weddid Men and "Wins, cap. i. 
(Arnold's Wyclif, III. 190 ; also in 
Vaughan's Tracts of John de Wyck- 
liffe p. 58).— See also The Seven Deadly 



Sins, cap. xxx. (Arnold, Vol. III. p. 
163). 

In the tract " De Officio Pastorale," 
alluded to above, there is a similar 
passage — "conjugium secundum legem 
Christi eis licitum odiunt ut venenum, 
et seculare dominium eis a Christo 
prohibitum nimis avide amplexantur" 
(P. II. cap. xi. pp. 50-51). 

It is to be borne in mind that at this 
period no one assumed that clerical 
celibacy had been ordained of Christ 
or the Apostles. 

3 Trialogi Lib. in. c. 22, 23 ; Lib. iv. 

16 (Ed. Lechler, Oxford 1869).— Cf. 
Apology for Lollard Doctrines, p. 38 
(Ed. Camden Soc). 



THE LOLLARDS. 381 

simplicity of the church, he had no thought of relegating its ministers 
to the carnalities of family life, which would render impossible the 
Apostolic poverty that was his ideal. Even the laity, in his scheme, 
were to be so rendered superior to the lusts of the flesh that he pro- 
nounced those who married from any other motive than that of 
having offspring to be not truly married. 1 He evidently had no 
intention to interfere with clerical celibacy, and the passages which 
have been cited to the contrary may safely be regarded as suppositi- 
tious. Either the writings in which they occur have been erroneously 
ascribed to Wickliffe, or the passages themselves have been interpo- 
lated by too zealous disciples, eager to procure the authority of the 
master for the later development of doctrines that were not his — a 
pious fraud too common in all ages of the church to excite surprise. 

It is easier to start a movement than to restrain it. Wickliffe 
might deny the authority of tradition, and yet preserve his respect 
for the tradition of celibacy, but his followers could not observe the 
distinction. They could see, if he could not, that the structure of 
sacerdotalism, to the overthrow of which he devoted himself, could 
not be destroyed without abrogating the rule which separated the 
priest from his fellow-men, and which severed all other ties in bind- 
ing him to the church. In 1394, only ten years after Wickliffe's 
death, the Lollards, by that time a powerful party, with strong 
revolutionary tendencies, presented to Parliament a petition for the 
thorough reformation of the church, containing twelve conclusions 
indicating the points on which they desired change. Of these, the 
third denounced the rule of celibacy as the cause of the worst dis- 
orders, and argued the necessity of its abrogation ; while the eleventh 
attacked the vows of nuns as even more injurious, and demanded 
permission for their marriage with but scanty show of respect. 2 
This became the received doctrine of the sect, for in a declaration 
made in 1400 by Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, concerning 
the Lollard heresies, we find enumerated the belief that those in holy 
orders could take to themselves wives without sin, and that monks 
and nuns were at liberty to abandon their profession, and marry at 
pleasure. 3 

The fierce persecutions of Henry V., to repress what he rightly 



1 Wilkins III. 229.— Trialogi Lib. IV. c. 20. 

3 Conclusiones Lollardorum (Wilkins III. 221-3). 

8 Wilkins III. 248. 



382 



THE HERESIES. 



considered as a formidable source of civil rebellion as well as heresy, 
succeeded in depriving the sect of political power ; yet its religious 
doctrines still continued to exist among the people, and even some- 
times obtained public expression. 1 They unquestionably tended 
strongly to shake the popular reverence for Rome, and had no little 
influence in paving the way for the revolt of the sixteenth century. 

John Huss was rather a reformer than a heresiarch. Admirer 
though he was of Wickliffe, even to the point of wishing to risk 
damnation with him, 2 he avoided the doctrinal errors of the English- 
man on the subject of the Eucharist. Yet his predestinarian views 
were unorthodox, and he shared in some degree Wickliffe's Gregorian 
ideas as to the effect of mortal sin in divesting the priesthood of all 
claim to sacredness or respect. According to his enemies, he asserted 
that no one could be the vicar of Christ or of Peter unless he were 
an humble imitator of the virtues of him whom he claimed to rep- 
resent ; and a pope who was given to avarice was only the representa- 
tive of Judas Iscariot. 3 His friend, Jerome of Prague, maintained 
with his latest breath that Huss was thoroughly orthodox, and was 



1 In 1426, ten years after the execu- 
tion of Lord Cobham, a Franciscan 
named Thomas Richmond was 
brought before the council of York for 
publicly preaching the high Wickliffite 
doctrine ' ' Sacerdos in peccato mortali 
lapsus, non est sacerdos. Item quod 
ecclesia nolente vel non puniente forni- 
carios, licitum est sa3cularibus eosdem 
pcena carceris castigare, et ad hoc as- 
tringuntur vinculo charitatis " (Wil- 
kins III. 488). This practical appli- 
cation of the Hildebrandine principle 
did not suit the church of the fifteenth 
century. It was pronounced heretical, 
and Friar Thomas was forced to recant. 

Equally offensive to the memory of 
Gregory was the decision of the Sor- 
bonne in 1486, condemning as hereti- 
cal the propositions of the puritan 
Bishop of Meaux — " 3. Un pretre for- 
nicateur ne doit pas dire Dominus vo- 
biscum ni reciter Toffice en aucun 
lieu sacre. Ce qui est faux et suspect 
d'heresie." — "4. Les sacremens admi- 
nistrez ou l'onice dit par un tel pretre 
ne valent pas mieux que les cris des 
chiens. Proposition fausse et erronee 
dans la premiere partie, heretique 
scandaleuse et offensant les oreilles 
pieuses dans la seconde." — Meury, 
Hist. Eccles. Liv. cxvi. No. 39. 



2 "When, after the fearful disaster of 
Taas, the council of Bale, in 1432, 
commenced the conferences which re- 
sulted in the nominal reconciliation 
of the Hussites, the fathers of the 
council were much scandalized at 
hearing the Bohemian deputies rever- 
ently quote "VVickliffe as the Evangeli- 
cal Doctor. In fact, Peter Payne, his 
disciple, who did so much to promul- 
gate his doctrines in Bohemia, was one 
of the disputants (Hartzheim Y. 
762-4). Even as early as 1403 the 
errors of "Wickliffe were formally con- 
demned by the University of Prague, 
on presentation by the Ordinary of the 
diocese, showing that they were already 
spreading and attracting attention 
(Hofler, Concil. Pragensia, p. 43. — 
Prag, 1862). 

3 Artie. Damnat. Joannis Husz, No. 
viii. x. xi. xii. xiii. xxii. xxx. 
(Concil. Constantiens. Sess. xv.) — On 
his examination Huss declared that 
these articles were exaggerated. See 
the proceedings in Yon der Hardt, 
T. IY. pp. 309-11. But on the next 
day he defended a proposition which 
was virtually identical (Ibid p 321). 



THE HUSSITES. 



383 



only inspired by indignation at seeing the wealth of the church, 
which was the patrimony of the poor, lavished on prostitutes, feast- 
ing, hunting, rich apparel, and other unseemly extravagance. 1 In 
the Bohemian clergy he had an ample target for his assaults, for they 
were in no respect better than their neighbors. During the latter 
half of the fourteenth century scarce a synod was held which did 
not denounce their vices, gambling, drunkenness, usury, simony, and 
concubinage; and when to put an end to the latter irregularity a 
strict visitation was made throughout the archiepiscopal diocese of 
Prague, the cunning rogues sent away or secreted their partners in 
guilt, and openly recalled them as soon as the storm had passed. 
The following year, Archbishop Sbinco peremptorily commanded that 
all concubines should be dismissed within six days, under pain of 
perpetual imprisonment, but this was evidently regarded as a mere 
hrutum fulmen, for the next year a new device was resorted to, by 
pronouncing all concubinary priests to be heretics. 2 All this might 
certainly seem to warrant any effort that might be made to accomplish 
what the authorities so signally failed in doing, but that any indi- 
vidual should assert the right of private judgment in reforming the 
church in its head and its members threatened results too formidable 
to the whole structure of sacerdotalism, and the condemnation of 
Huss was inevitable. Still, like Wickliffe, he was a devout believer 
in ascetic purity. His denunciations of the wealth and disorders of 
the clergy raised so great an excitement throughout Bohemia that 
King Wenceslas was forced to issue a decree depriving immoral 
ecclesiastics of their revenues. The partisans of Huss took a lively 
interest in the enforcement of this law, and brought the unhappy 
ecclesiastics before the tribunals with a pertinacity which amounted 
to the persecution of an inquisition. 3 

Unlike the Lollards, the Hussites maintained the strictness of 
their founder's views on the subject of celibacy. If the fiercer 
Taborites cruelly revenged their wrongs upon the religious orders, it 
was to punish the minions of Borne, and not to manifest their con- 
tempt for asceticism ; and, at the same time, even the milder Calixtins 



1 Poggii Florent. Descript. Hieron. 
Prag. (Von der Hardt, T. III. p. 69). 

2 Statut. Synod, ann. 1405; 1406 
No. 1 ; 1407 No. 3 (Hofler Concil. Pra- 
gens. pp. 50, 54, 59). 

3 Pluquet, Diet, des Heresies, s. v. 
Huss. — Synod. Olomucens. ann. 1413 



can. 1. " asserentes etiam . . . quod 
bona clericorum male viventiurn pos- 
sunt rapere et eos spoliare sine poena 
excommunicationis . . . Ex eadem 
radice et hseretica pravitate dicunt 
alii, quod sacerdos in mortali existens 
peccato non possit conficere corpus 
Christi" (Hartzheim V. 39, 40). 



384 



THE HERESIES 



treated all lapses from clerical virtue among themselves with a 
severity which proved their sincerity and earnestness, and which had 
long been a stranger to the administration of the church. 1 One of 
the complaints against the priesthood formulated in the proclamation 
of Procopius and the other chiefs in 1431, at the assembling of the 
Council of Bale, was that the clergy were all fornicators, committing 
adultery with men's wives, or having wives and " presby terissse " of 
their own; 2 and when, in 1562, the Emperor Ferdinand endeavored 
to procure from the Council of Trent the use of the cup for the 
Utraquists or Calixtins of Bohemia, he urged in their favor that 
they would not admit the ministrations of any priest who did not 
lead a celibate life. 3 Traces of the teachings of the Fraticelli, more- 
over, are to be found in the doctrines which dissevered temporal from 
spiritual power, and denied to the clergy all ownership or dominion 
over landed possessions. 4 

The Hussite movement thus was an efficient protest against some 
of the forms of sacerdotalism. The nominal reconciliation effected 
by the Council of Bale, against the wishes of the papacy, afforded 
considerable scope for religious liberty, which was strengthened by 
the alliance between Bohemia and Poland. The reigns of George 
Podiebrad, Vlasdislav, and Louis, which extended from 1458 to 1525, 
favored this spirit and prepared the soil for the rapid spread of 
Lutheranism throughout those regions, which in the sixteenth century 
narrowly escaped permanent separation from Catholic unity. 



1 Conciliab. Pragens. ann. 1420 
can. xii., xiii. — At this time the Huss- 
ites had full sway in Bohemia; the 
council was held by Conrad, Arch- 
bishop of Prague, who had adopted 
their faith, and its canons were in- 
tended for the internal regulation of 
their own church (Hartzheim V. 198). 
In the long conferences, extending 
from 1431 to 1438, which resulted in 
their reunion with the Catholic church, 
there is no allusion to the subject of 
celibacy. The four points on which 
they insisted were, 1st, the communion 
in both elements ; 2d, the reformation 
of morals by abrogating ecclesiastical 
immunity ; 3d, free preaching of the 
Scripture ; and 4th, the secularization 
of church property (Ibid. 760-73). 
How little, in fact, they differed in doc- 
trinal points from Rome is seen in the 
confession of faith agreed upon at 
Prague in 1432 (Johan. de Ragus. de 



Reduct. Bohem. ap. Monument. Con- 
cil. General. Ssec. xv. pp. 182 sq.). 

This did not, however, save them 
from the customary accusations of 
immorality. Thus, a contemporary 
describes the indulgence of indiscrimi- 
nate intercourse as one of the rules of 
the sect (Joann. Fistenportii Chron. 
ann. 1419. — Hahn. Collect. Monument. 
T. I. p. 403), and, in 1431, Conrad, 
Archbishop of Mainz, in convoking a 
council to take action against them, 
says of the sect " exterminavit clerum 
et omnem coelibatum commercio ne- 
phando stupravit." — Gudeni Cod. 
Diplom. IV. 185. 

3 Epist. Procopii Art. viii. (Mar- 
tene Ampl. Coll. VIII. 25). 

3 Petit. Csesaris No. 12 (Le Plat, 
Monument. Concil. Trident. V. 348). 

* Conciliab. Pragens. ann. 1420 can. 



BEETHREN OF THE CROSS. 



385 



One fragment of the Hussites, however, held wholly aloof from 
reconciliation to Rome and professed to uphold in their purity the 
doctrines of their founder. These called themselves the Orthodox 
Brethren, but were stigmatized by their adversaries with the oppro- 
brious name of Picardi, in allusion to an obnoxious heresy of the 
previous centuries. In process of time they admitted the validity of 
priestly marriage, though it was discouraged among them in view of 
the dangers to which they were exposed and the constant risk of 
martyrdom incurred by all who ventured to be conspicuous among 
them, for Hussite and Catholic alike sought their extermination. 
Yet they bravely maintained their existence until the Reformation, 
when they eagerly fraternized with Luther, 1 such minor differences 
as existed in the organization of the respective churches being 
amicably regulated in 1570 by the agreement of Sendomir. 2 



Wickliffe and Huss were not the only inheritors of the antisacer- 
dotal spirit of the Fraticelli. About the close of the fourteenth 
century there arose in Thuringia a heresiarch of the flagellants named 
Conrad Schmidt, whose teachings swept away the forms and observ- 
ances which had so thickly incrusted the simple doctrines of Chris- 
tianity. The sacrifice of the mass, image-worship, fasting, feasts, 
purgatory, confession, and absolution, all fell before the fearless logic 
of the reformer, and his disciples fondly treasured him in memory as 
a second incarnation of Enoch. For forty years the sect flourished 
in secret, but at length it was discovered in Misnia, where its 
members were known as Brethren of the Cross, and where it was 
exterminated in 1414 by the fagots of Sangerhausen. The licen- 
tious doctrines attributed to them by the monkish chronicler show 
that sacerdotal celibacy was one of the observances which they re- 
pudiated. 3 Similar in its tendency, and almost identical in details, 
was the heresy which, in 1411, was condemned in Flanders by Peter 
d'Ailly, Archbishop of Cambrai. Giles Cantor, a layman, and a 
Carmelite known as William of Hilderniss gathered around them 



1 Camerarii Hist. Narrat. de Fratrum 
Orthodox. Ecclesiis in Bohemia, etc. 
pp. 100, 109-10, 114, 121, 128. 

2 Consensus in Fide inter Ecclesias 
Evangelicas, etc. Haidelberg^, 1605. 

3 The spirit of the sectaries of 
Schmidt is shown by one of their doc- 
trines — "Propter sacerdotum nequi- 



tiam, licentiavit Deus et abjecit sacer- 
dotium evangelicum," and by their 
argument for abolishing masses for 
the dead "nihil prosint defunctis, sed 
sint solatia vivorum et repleant mar- 
supia clericorum." — G-obelin. Person. 
Oosmodrom. ^Etat. vi. cap. xciii. — 
Cf. Theod. Vrie, Hist. Concil. Con- 
stant. Lib. in. Dist. viii. 



25 



386 



THE HERESIES. 



followers who assumed the title of Men of Intelligence. Like Conrad 
Schmidt, they rejected the empty formalism which had to so great an 
extent usurped the place of religion. The Atonement had satisfied 
God for all ; there was no necessity for the intervention of sacerdotal 
ministrations, for confession and absolution were useless, Christ was 
not present in the sacrament, purgatory did not exist, and all man- 
kind, besides the fallen angels, would in the end be saved. There 
was, however, little of the temper of martyrs about them, and a 
public renunciation of their errors at Brussels speedily deprived them 
of all importance. 1 



Savonarola can scarcely be classed among heretics. Though he 
was tortured and put to death by the church for his rebellious 
attempts to purify it, still his doctrines never varied from strict 
orthodoxy, and Benedict XIV. even included him in a catalogue of 
the holy servants of God. 2 Yet Savonarola, when his career was 
cut short, was rapidly becoming a schismatic, as was inevitable with 
all reformers of ardent temperament as soon as they discovered the 
impossibility of removing the corruptions of the establishment. If, 
instead of the fickle support of the Florentine populace, which be- 
trayed him at his utmost need, he had enjoyed the steadfast protec- 
tion of such a patron as the Elector Frederic of Saxony, he would 
doubtless have ripened in time, as Luther subsequently did, into a 
full-blown heresiarch, though his innate defects of character would 
scarcely have enabled him, under any circumstances, to conduct suc- 
cessfully so complicated a movement as a separation from the church. 

The principal feature of his history which concerns us is the good- 
natured indifference with which Alexander VI. endured his repeated 
attacks on the scandals and vices of the papal court. There were so 
many political interests entangled in Savonarola's career that it is 
not always easy to reach the hidden springs of action at work, but 
it may be assumed that Alexander, if left to himself, would have 



1 See the proceedings in Baluze and 
Mansi, I. 288-93. As usual, the Men 
of Intelligence were accused of indul- 
ging in promiscuous intercourse. 

2 Even soon after Savonarola's mar- 
tyrdom, Julius II. refused to listen to 
tnose who desired a condemnation of 
his memory. Leo X. honored him by 
celebrating the Epiphany of 1515 in 
his convent of San Marco. Julius III. 



declared that he would deem heretical 
any one who should attack him. Paul 
IV. assembled a congregation for the 
purpose of examining and deciding 
upon his works, and after six months' 
labor they reported that his writings 
were unexceptionable, though a portion 
which reflected too vigorously on the 
papal court were declared to be unfitted 
for general perusal. — Perrens. Jerome 
Savonarole, Paris 1856, pp. 296-7. 



SAVONAROLA. 



387 



allowed the reformer to declaim unmolested. More than once he 
interdicted the Dominican from preaching and ordered him to Rome, 
but took little heed of disobedience. At length he launched an ex- 
communication, which for nearly a year received as little respect as 
his previous orders, and when at length a sudden revulsion of feeling 
among the Florentine mob enabled him to dispose of his adversary 
under the forms of law, it is probable that even then he would not 
have pushed matters to such extremity had not Savonarola been led 
to an act of aggressive rebellion. The Duke of Milan forwarded to 
the pope intercepted letters in which the reformer, by command of 
God, urged the monarchs of Europe to call a general council under 
pretext that the church was without a head, since Alexander was an 
infidel who had obtained the tiara by simony and had polluted it 
with unimaginable vices. In his capacity of prophet, Savonarola 
promised the rulers triumph over their enemies if they would aid in 
the good work of cleansing the church, and he engaged to prove 
before the council the truth of his allegations by working miracles. 1 
It would probably be unjust to condemn him as an imposter, but 
such conclusion is only to be escaped by pronouncing him partially 
insane. That fierce age was not apt to invoke such considerations 
in palliation of so flagrant an attempt at revolution, and Savonarola 
was doomed. 



While thus trampling out these successive revolts, the church was 
blind to the lesson taught by their perpetual recurrence. The minds 
of men were gradually learning to estimate at its true value the claim 
of the hierarchy to veneration, and at the same time the vices of the 
establishment were yearly becoming more odious, and its oppression 
more onerous. The explosion might be delayed by attempts at 
partial reformation, but it was inevitable. 



1 See Baluze et Mansi I. 584-5 for 
the letters to the Emperor of Germany 
and King and Queen of Spain. Per- 
rens (op. cit. p. 375) also gives the one 



addressed to the King of France, while 
those to the Kings of England and 
Hungary have apparently been lost. 



XXIV. 

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 



Neither the assaults of heretics nor the constant efforts at partial 
reform attempted by individual prelates had thus far proved of any 
avail. As time wore on, the church sank deeper into the mire of 
corruption, and its struggles to extricate itself grew feebler and more 
hopeless. We have seen that, early in the fifteenth century, Gerson 
advised an organized system of concubinage as preferable to the in- 
discriminate licentiousness which was everywhere prevalent. Even 
more suggestive are the declarations of Nicholas de Clemanges, 
Rector of the University of Paris and Secretary of Benedict XIII. 
(Pedro de Luna). He does not hesitate to say that the vices of the 
clergy were so universal that those who adhered to the rule of chastity 
were the objects of the most degrading and disgusting suspicions, so 
little faith was there in the possible purity of any ecclesiastic. He 
also records the extension of a custom to which I have already 
alluded when he states that in a majority of parishes the people 
insisted on their pastors keeping concubines, and that even this was 
a precaution insufficient for the peace and honor of their families. 1 
In another tract he describes the mass of the clergy as wholly aban- 
doned to worldly ambition and vices, oppressing and despoiling those 
subjected to them and spending their ill-gotten gains in the vilest 
excesses, while they ridiculed unsparingly such few pious souls as 
endeavored to live according to the light of the gospel. 2 In most of 
the dioceses the parish priests openly kept concubines, which they 



1 Taceo de fornicationibus et adulte- 
riis, a quibus qui alieni sunt probro 
ceteris ac ludibrio esse solent, spado- 
nesque aut sodomitse appellantur; 
denique laici usque adeo persuasum 
habent nullos coelibes esse, ut in pie- 
risque parochiis non aliter velint 
presbyterum tolerare nisi concubinam 



liabeat, quo vel sic suis sit consultum 
uxoribus, qua3 nee sic quideni usque- 
quaque sunt extra periculum. — ISTic. 
de Clemangis de Prsesul. Simoniac. 
(Bayle, Diet. Hist. s. v. Hall). 

2 Nic. de Clamengiis Disput. super 
Mater. Concil. General. 



DEMOKALIZATION OF THE CHURCH. 



389 



were permitted to do on payment of a tax to their bishops. Nun- 
neries were brothels, and to take the veil was simply another mode 
of becoming a public prostitute. 1 Cardinal Peter d'Ailly declares 
that he does not dare to describe the immorality of the nunneries. 2 
In a similar indignant mood Gerson stigmatizes the nunneries of his 
time as houses of prostitution, the monasteries as centres of trade and 
amusement, the cathedral churches as dens of ravishers and robbers, 
and the priesthood at large as habitual concubinarians. 3 That he 
felt these evils to be inseparable from the condition of the church is 
evident when, in an argument to prove the necessity of celibacy, he 
is driven to the assertion that it is better to tolerate incontinent 
priests than to have no priests at all. 4 He argues that the clergy 
are worthy of as many sentences of damnation as they seduce souls 
to perdition by their corrupt example, and he asks, when he who 
destroys himself by his own sins is to be condemned, whether he 
who draws with him numerous others is not still more worthy of 
perdition. 5 Theodoric a Niem represents the bishops of Scandinavia 
as carrying with them their concubines on their pastoral visitations, 
and as inflicting penalties on such of the parish priests as they found 
living without similar companions, while these women habitually 
took precedence in church of the wives of the neighboring gentry — 
and he adds that the clergy of the south of Europe were no better. 6 
Theodoric Vrie, a learned and pious churchman of Saxony, is 
equally unsparing in his denunciations of the Teutonic clergy 7 — 
and, indeed, the testimony of the writers of the period is so unani- 
mous that their descriptions of clerical vices cannot be regarded as 
the mere rhetorical declamation of disappointed reformers. 

It was evident that the efforts of local synods were fruitless to 
eradicate evils so general and so deeply rooted, while the necessity 
for some reform became every day more apparent. Though Lollardry 
had been crushed in England under the stern hand of Henry V., yet 
it was reappearing in Bohemia in a form even more threatening. 



1 ISTic. do Clamengiis de Kuina Ec- 
clesiae cap. xxii., xxxvi. — Conf. Theo- 
baldi Conquest. ( Von der Hardt T. I. P. 
xix. p. 909). 

2 P. de Alliaco Canones Keformat. 
cap. iv. (Yon der Hardt T. I. P. vi. 
p. 425). 

3 G-ersoni Declarat. defect, viror. ec- 
clesiast. lxv., lxvi. 

4 Dicimus quod de duobus nialis 



minus est incontinentes tolerare sacer- 
dotes quani nullos habere. — Gersoni 
Dial. Sophise et Naturae Act. iv. 

5 Ejusd. Sermo de Vita Clericorum. 

6 Theod. a Niem Nemoris Unionis 
Tract. V. cap. xxxv. 

7 Theod. Vrie Hist. Concil. Con- 
stant. Lib. ii., in. (Von der Hardt 
T. IX 



390 THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY. 

The council of Pisa had not succeeded in healing the Great Schism, 
and there arose a general demand for an (Ecumenic Council in which 
the church universal should assemble for the purpose of purifying 
itself, of eradicating heresy, and of settling definitely the pretensions 
of the three claimants of the papacy. John XXIII. yielded to the 
pressure, and the call for the Council of Constance went forth in his 
name and in that of the Emperor Sigismund. 

So powerful a body had never before been gathered together in 
Europe. It claimed to be the supreme representative of the church, 
and though it acknowledged John XXIII. as the lawful successor of 
St. Peter, it had no scruples in arraigning, trying, condemning, and 
deposing him — an awful expression of its supremacy, without prece- 
dent in the past, and without imitation in succeeding ages. As re- 
gards heresy, it did the best it could, according to the lights of its 
age, by burning John Huss and Jerome of Prague. Its functions 
as a reformer, however, required for their exercise more nerve than 
even the condemnation of a pope. Many members were thoroughly 
penetrated with the conviction that reform was of instant necessity, 
and such men as Gerson, Peter d'Ailly of Cambrai, and Nicholas 
de Clemanges were prepared to shrink from none of the means requi- 
site for so hallowed an end. In the existing corruption, however, of 
the body from which representatives were drawn, such men could 
scarcely form a controlling majority. After the council had been in 
session for nearly two years, the reformers began to despair of effect- 
ing anything, and Clemanges did not hesitate to assert that nothing 
was to be expected from men who would regard reform as the greatest 
calamity that could befall themselves ; * while another of the members 
of the council declared that every one wanted such a reform as should 
allow him to retain his own particular form of iniquity. 2 These esti- 
mates, indeed, of the character of the majority of the good fathers 
of Constance is borne out by the contemporary accounts of the mul- 
titudes who flocked to it to ply their trades among the assembled 
dignitaries of the church, showing that they were by no means all 
devoted to mortifying the flesh. 3 



1 Nic. de Clamengiis, Disput. sup. 
Mat. Cone. General. This work was 
written in 1416, after the council had. 
been in session for nearly two years. 

2 Theobaldi Conquestio (Yon der 
Hardt T. I. P. xix. p. 904). 

3 Item, fistulatores, tubicenae, jocu- 



latores, 516 ; item, meretrices, virgines 
publicae, 718. — Laur. Byzynii Diar. 
Bell. Hussit. A Catholic contempo- 
rary, however, reduces the number of 
courtezans to 450 and that of jugglers 
and minstrels to 320 (Joann. Fisten- 
portii Chron. ann. 1415. — Hahn. Col- 
lect. Monument. I. 401). 



THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 391 

The feelings of those who sincerely desired reform, as they saw 
the prospect rapidly fading before their eyes, may be estimated by a 
sermon of a sturdy Gascon abbot, Bernhardus Baptisatus, preached 
before the council in August, 1517, about three months before the 
conservatives succeeded in carrying their point by electing Martin V. 
He denounces the members of the council as Pharisees, falsely pre- 
tending to be devout in order to elude the punishment due to their 
crimes. The masses and processions, which were the main business 
of the assemblage, he declares to be valueless in the eye of God, for 
most of those who so busily took part in them were involved solely 
in worldly cares, laughing, cheating, sleeping, or demoralizing the 
rest with their ungodly conversation. The Holy Spirit did not hold 
the acts of the council acceptable, nor dwell with its unrighteous 
members. 1 Such a convocation could have but one result. 

It is easy therefore to understand the influences that were brought 
to bear to defeat the expectations of the reformers ; how the subject 
could be postponed until after the questions connected with the papacy 
and with heresy were disposed of; and how, after the election of 
Martin V., those who shrank from all reform could assume that it 
might safely be intrusted to the hands of a pontiff so able, so ener- 
getic, and so virtuous. In all this they were successful. The 
council closed its weary sessions, April 22, 1418, and during its 
three years and a half of labor it had only found leisure to regulate 
the dress of ecclesiastics, the unclerical cut of whose sleeves was 
especially distasteful to the representative body of Christendom. 2 

Still, the reformers had made a stubborn fight, and had procured 
the appointment of a commission to consider all reformatory propo- 
sitions and prepare a general scheme for the adoption of the council. 
This body labored as diligently as though its deliberations were to 
be crowned with practical results, and various projects of reform 
proposed by it have been preserved. In one of these the severest 
measures of repression were suggested to put an end to the scandal 
of concubinage which was openly practised in the majority of dio- 
ceses. Under this scheme, while all the canonical punishments here- 
tofore decreed were maintained in full vigor, deprivation was pro- 
nounced against all holders of ecclesiastical preferment, from bishops 
down, who should not within one month eject their guilty partners ; 
their positions were declared vacant ipso jure, and their successors 

1 Bernhardi Baptisati Sermo (Yon der Hardt T. I. P. xviii. pp. 884-5). 

2 Concil. Constant. Sess. XLIII. can. de Yita et Honestate Clericorum. 



392 



THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 



were to be immediately appointed. Those who did not hold benefices 
were similarly to be declared ineligible to preferment. It appears that 
scandals had arisen in many places from the Hildebrandine and 
Wickliffite heresy whereby parishioners declined the ministrations of 
those who were living in open and notorious sin ; and to avoid these, 
while the commission declined to pass an opinion on the propriety of 
such action, it advised that such private judgment should not be exer- 
cised. 1 In another elaborate system of reform, which bears the marks of 
long deliberation, the attempt was made to eradicate the long-standing 
abuse of admitting to preferment the illegitimate children of ecclesi- 
astics, and it was declared that papal dispensations should no longer 
be recognized except in cases of peculiar fitness or high rank. 2 The 
same code of discipline struck a significant blow at the inviolability 
of the monastic profession when it endeavored to check the prevailing 
and deplorable licentiousness of the nunneries by decreeing that no 
woman should be admitted to the vows beneath the age of twenty, 
and that all vows taken at a younger age should be null and void. 3 
These projects are interesting merely as indicating the direction in 
which the reforming portion of the church desired to move, and as 
showing that even they did not propose to remove the celibacy which 
was the chief cause of the evils they so sincerely deplored. 



Martin V. had assumed the responsibility of reforming the church, 
and he did, in fact, attempt it after some fashion, though he appar- 
ently took to heart Dante's axiom — 

. Lunga promessa, con l'attender corto 
1 Ti fara trionfar nell' alto seggio. 

In 1422 Cardinal Branda of Piacenza, his legate, when sent to 
Germany to preach a crusade against the Hussites, was honored with 
the title of Reformer General, and full powers were given to him to 
effect this part of his mission. The letters-patent of the pope bear 
ample testimony to the fearful depravity of the Teutonic church, 4 



1 De Ecclesiae Reformat. Protocoll. 
cap. xxxiii. (Yon der Hardt T. I. P. 
x. pp. 635-6). 

2 Reformatorii Constant. Decretal. 
Lib. i. Tit. v. (Ibid. p. 679). 

3 Ibid. Lib. III. Tit. x. cap. 20 
(p. 722). 

4 For instance, as regards the religi- 
ous bouses — " In nonnullis quoque 



monasteriis . . . norma disciplines re- 
spuitur, cultus divinus negligitur, per- 
sons quoque bujusmodi, vita? ac 
morum bonestate prostrata, lubrici- 
tati, incontinentia?, et aliis variis car- 
nalis concupiscentia? voluptatibus et 
viciis non sine gravi divinge majesta- 
tis offensa tabescentes, vitam ducunt 
dissolutam." — Martin V. ad Brandam 
\ iii. (Ludewig Eeliq. Msctorum XI. 
409). 



CORKUPTION UNDIMINISHED 



393 



while the constitution which Branda promulgated declares that in a 
portion of the priesthood there was scarcely left a trace of decency 
or morality. According to this document, concubinage, simony, 
neglect of sacred functions, gambling, drinking, fighting, buffoonery, 
and kindred pursuits, were the prevalent vices of the ministers of 
Christ; but the punishments which he enacted for their suppression 
— repetitions of those which we have seen proclaimed so many times 
before — were powerless to overcome the evils which had become part 
and parcel of the church itself. 1 

What was the condition of clerical morals in Italy soon after this 
may be learned from a single instance. When Ambrose was made 
General of the austere order of Camaldoli he set vigorously to work 
to reform the laxity which had almost ruined it. One of his abbots 
was noted for abounding licentiousness ; not content with ordinary 
amours, he was wont to visit the nunneries in his district to indulge 
in promiscuous intercourse with the virgins dedicated to God. Yet 
Ambrose in taking him to task did not venture to punish him for his 
misdeeds, but promised him full pardon for the past and to take him 
into favor, if he would only abstain for the future — a task which 
ought to be easy as he was now old and should be content with having 
long lived evilly and be ready to dedicate his few remaining years to 
the service of God. 2 When a reformer, who enjoyed the special 
friendship and protection of Eugenius IV., was forced to be so 
moderate with such a criminal, it is easy to imagine what was the 
tone of morality in the church at large. 

While the Armagnacs and Burgundians were rivalling the English 



1 Usque adeo nonnullorum clerico- 
rum corruptela excrevit, ut morum 
atque honestatis vestigia apud eos 
pauca admodum remanserint. — Con- 
stit. Brandge g 1 (Op. cit. XI. 385). 
This condition of affairs was not the 
result of any abandonment of the 
attempt to enforce the canons. Local 
synods were meeting every year, and 
scarcely one of them failed to call 
attention to the subject, devising fresh 
penalties to effect the impossible. The 
result is shown in the lament of the 
council of Cologne in 1423 — " Quia 
tamen, succrescente malitia temporis 
moderni, labes hujusmodi criminis in 
ecclesia Dei in tantum inolevit, quod 
scandala plurima in populo sunt ex- 
orta, et verisimiliter exoriri poterunt 
in futurum, et ex fide dignorum rela- 



tione percepimus quod quidam eccle- 
siarum prgslati et alii, etiam capitula 
. . . tales in suis iniquitatibus susti- 
nuerunt et sustinent." So far, how- 
ever, were the decrees of the council 
from being effective, that the Arch- 
bishop was obliged to modify them 
and to declare that they should only 
be enforced against those ecclesiastics 
who were notoriously guilty, and who 
kept their concubines publicly. — 
Concil. Coloniens. ann. 1423 can. i. 
viii. (Hartzheim V. 217, 220). 

2 Ambrosii Camaldulensis Lib. V. 
Epist. xii. (Martene Ampliss. Collect. 
III. 119-21). This was not the only 
case of abbots whose scandalous lives 
were treated with equal forbearance. 
See Epistt. xiii., xiv. 



394 



THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY. 



in carrying desolation into every corner of France, it could not be 
expected that the peaceful virtues could flourish, or sempiternal 
corruption be reformed. Accordingly, it need not surprise us to see 
Hardouin, Bishop of Angers, despondingly admit, in 1428, that 
licentiousness had become so habitual among his clergy that it was 
no longer reputed to be a sin ; that concubinage was public and un- 
disguised, and that the patrimony of Christ was wasted in support- 
ing the guilty partners of the priesthood. That gambling, swearing, 
drunkenness, and all manner of unclerical conduct should accompany 
these disorders, is too probable to require the concurrent testimony 
which the worthy bishop affords us. 1 Alain Chartier, Archdeacon 
of Paris and Secretary to Charles VI. and Charles VII., confirms 
this in a more general way, when he attributes to enforced celibacy 
and the temporal endowments of the church the vices and crimes 
which rendered the clergy so odious and contemptible to the laity 
that he looks forward to the speedy advent of Antichrist to wipe out 
the whole system in universal ruin. 2 Apparently its corruption was 
too deep-seated to hope for any milder means of reformation. To this 
we may at least partially attribute the utter loss of respect for sacred 
things which rendered the churches and their pastors a special mark 
for pillage and persecution during the dreary civil wars of the 
period. 3 

In England, which had enjoyed comparative immunity from civil 
strife, matters were quite as bad. At the request of Henry V., in 
1414, the University of Oxford prepared a series of articles for the 
reformation of the church, whose shortcomings were vehemently 
attacked by the Lollards. It is not easy to imagine a more humiliat- 
ing confession than is contained in the 38th article, directed against 
priestly immorality. The carnal and undisguised profligacy of 
ecclesiastics is declared to be a scandal to the church, and its impurity 
to be a dangerous temptation to others. It is therefore recommended 
that all public fornicators be suspended for a limited time from the 
ministry of the altar, and that some corporal chastisement be inflicted 
on them, in place of the trifling pecuniary mulct, which, levied in 
secret, had no effect in deterring them from their evil courses. 4 



1 Harduini Andegav. Epist. Statut. 
Prsef. (Martene Thesaur. IV. 523-4). 

2 Alan. Charter. Lib. de Exilio 
(Johan. Maris8 Lib. de Schismat. et 
Concil.). 



3 Nic. de Clamengiis de Lapsu et 
Eeparat. Justitise (Ed. 1519 pp. 13- 
14). 

4 Wilkins III. 364-5. 



THE COUNCIL OF BALE. 395 

Such was the state of sacerdotal morals when the great council of 
Bale attracted to itself the hopes of Christendom as the sole instru- 
ment by which the purification of the church could be effected — a 
purification which was felt to be the only safeguard against a revolu- 
tionary uprising of the indignant laity. When Eugenius IV., 
towards the close of the year 1431, dreading the antagonism between 
the council and the papacy, sent his Bull ordering its dissolution, his 
legate, Cardinal Cesarini, took the responsibility of refusing obedience. 
His letter explaining the reasons of his contumacy affords a curious 
picture of the internal condition of the church and of the relations 
existing between it and the laity. The extreme corruption of 
ecclesiastical morals had been the principal object of convoking the 
council and had given rise to a feeling of fierce hostility towards the 
church. To this was attributable the success which had attended 
the Hussite movement, and unless the people could have reason to 
anticipate amendment, there was ample cause to fear a general 
imitation of the Hussites. So many provincial synods were daily 
held without result that confidence was no longer felt in the ordinary 
ecclesiastical machinery ; the state of the public mind grew constantly 
more threatening as fresh scandals were wrought by the clergy, and 
the hopes entertained of the council were the only restraint which 
prevented the breaking out of a wide-spread revolt. As a proof of 
his assertions, the legate refers to various local troubles. Magdeburg 
had expelled her archbishop and clergy, was preparing wagons with 
which to fight, after the Bohemian fashion, and was said to have sent 
for a Hussite to command her forces. Passau had revolted against 
her bishop, and was even then laying close siege to his citadel. 
Bamberg was engaged in a violent quarrel with her bishop and 
chapter. These cities were regarded as the centres of formidable 
secret confederacies, and were believed to be negotiating with the 
Hussites. 1 The good fathers evidently recognized the full magnitude 
of the danger. The results of the inaction of the Council of Con- 
stance were full of pregnant warnings. The reformers could no 
longer be brought to trust the papacy, and those who might secretly 
deprecate reform were fully alive to the threatening aspect of affairs. 
They therefore addressed themselves resolutely to the removal of the 
cause. All who were guilty of public concubinage were ordered to 



1 JEneas Sylvii Comment, de G-est. I Avisam. ann. 1433 (Goldast. III. 427 
Cone. Basil, ad calcem (Opp. Basil, sqq.). 
1551 pp. 66-70).— Cf. Sigismundi Imp. | 



396 



THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 



dismiss their consorts within sixty days after the promulgation of the 
canon, under pain of deprivation of revenue for three months. 
Persistent contumacy or repetition of the offence was visited with 
suspension from functions and stipend until satisfactory evidence 
should be afforded of repentance and amendment. Bishops who 
neglected to enforce the law were to be held as sharing the guilt 
which they allowed to pass unpunished ; and those prelates who were 
above the jurisdiction of local tribunals or synods were to be re- 
manded to Rome for trial. The council deplored the extensive prev- 
alence of the "cullagium," by which those to whom was entrusted 
the administration of the church did not hesitate to enjoy a filthy 
gain by selling licenses to sin. A curse was pronounced on all 
involved in such transactions ; they were to share the penalties of the 
guilt which they encouraged, and were, in addition, to pay a fine of 
double the amount of their iniquitous receipts. 1 In the Pragmatic 
Sanction, moreover, agreed upon in 1438 between the Emperor 
Albert II. and Charles VII. of France, the regulation confiscating 
three months' revenues of concubinary priests was embodied. 2 

Honest, well-meant legislation this ; yet the fathers of the council 
or the princes of Christendom could hardly deceive themselves with 
the expectation that it would prove effectual. If legislation could 
accomplish the desired result, there had already been enough of it 
since the days of Siricius. The compilations of canon law were full 
of admirable regulations, by which generation after generation had 
endeavored to attain the same object by every imaginable modifica- 
tion of inquisition and penalty. Ingenuity had been exhausted in 
devising laws which were only promulgated to be despised and for- 
gotten. Something more was wanting, and that something could not 
be had without overturning the elaborate structure so skilfully and 
laboriously built up by the craft and enthusiasm of ten centuries. 

How utterly impotent, in fact, were the efforts of the council, is 
evident when, within five years after the adoption of the Basilian 
canons, Doctor Kokkius, in a sermon preached before the council of 
Freysingen, could scarcely find words strong enough to denounce the 
evil courses of the clergy as a class ; 3 and when, within fifteen years, 



1 Concil. Basiliens. Sess. xs. (Jan. 22, 
1435). 

2 Pragm. Sanct. aim. 1438 cap. 31 
(Goldast. I. 403). 

3 Quoniam nostri temporis clerici 
sunt, heu, affectu crudeles, affatu 



mendaces, gestu incompositi, victu 
luxuriosi, actu impii, et sub vacuo 
sanctitatis nomine sancti nominis 
derogant discipline (Hartzheim V. 
266). The council contented itself 
with repeating the canons of Bale. 



EVIL INFLUENCE OF ROME 



397 



we find Nicholas V. declaring that the clergy enjoyed such immunity 
that they scarcely regarded incontinence as a sin — a declaration sus- 
tained by the regulations promulgated for the restraint of the officials 
of his own court, which imply the previous open and undisguised 
defiance of the canons. 1 

Even in this attempt of Nicholas, however, is to be seen one of the 
causes which perpetuated the corruption of the church. He orders 
that all who thereafter persist in keeping concubines in defiance of 
the regulations shall be incapable of receiving benefices without 
special letters of indulgence from the Holy See. 2 Shrouded under a 
thin veil of formality, this in substance indicates the degrading source 
of revenue which was so energetically condemned in inferior officials. 
The pressing and insatiable pecuniary needs of the papal court, 
indeed, rendered it impotent as a reformer, however honest the 
wearer of the tiara might himself be in desiring to rescue the church 
from its infamy. Reckless expenditure and universal venality were 
insuperable obstacles to any comprehensive and effective measures of 
reformation. Every one was preoccupied either in devising or in 
resisting extortion. The local synods were engaged in quarrelling 
over the subsidies demanded by Rome, while the chronicles of the 
period are filled with complaints of the indulgences sold year after 
year to raise money for various purposes. Sometimes the objects 
alleged are indignantly declared to be purely supposititious ; at other 
times intimations are thrown out that the collections were diverted to 
the private gain of the popes and of their creatures. 3 The opinion 



1 Lib. in. Tit. i. c. 3, in Septimo. 

2 Quicunque alii concubinas et mu- 
lieres hujusmodi, contra prgesentem 
probibitionem ten ere prsesumentes, 
inhabiles censeantur ad beneficia ob- 
tinenda, et in dicta curia officia hu- 
jusmodi exercenda, nee illorum ca- 
paces efficiantur, nisi inhabilitatem 
suam antea per dictse sedis literas 
obtinuerint aboleri. — Ubi sup. 

3 Comp. Doeringii Chron. passim. 
Doringk was minister or head of the 
powerful Franciscan order in Saxony, 
and therefore may be considered an 
unexceptionable witness. 

In the Polish diet of 1459, one of 
its leading members brought forward 
a series of propositions which showed 
the feelings entertained by the people 
towards papal exactions — "The Bishop 
of Kome has invented a most unjust 



motive for imposing taxes — the war 
against the infidels . . . The Pope 
feigns that he employs his treasures 
in the erection of churches ; but in 
fact he employs them to enrich his 
relations," etc. — Krasinski, Keforma- 
tion in Poland I. 96. 

The councils of Constance and Bale 
had produced, for a time, a spirit of 
great independence. John of Frank- 
fort does not hesitate to declare that the 
papal authority is not binding when 
in opposition to the law of G-od — 
"Unde patet quod nee papalis vel et 
imperialis constitutio legi Dei ob- 
vians possit dici recta; nee aliquis 
ipsorum potest licite mandare quod 
sua constitutio servetur a subditis " 
(Johann. de Francford. contra Fey- 
meros). According to the decisions of 
the Decretalists, this was rank heresy, 
and vet John of Frankfort was one of 



398 



THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY. 



which the church in general entertained of the papal court is mani- 
fested with sufficient distinctness in a letter from Ernest, Archbishop 
of Magdeburg, to his ambassador at Rome. The prelate states that 
he has deposited five hundred florins in lugger's bank at Augsburg, 
for which he desires to procure certain bulls, one to enable him to 
sell indulgences, the other to compel the chapter of Magdeburg to 
allow him to dispose of the salt-works of Halle, in defiance of the 
vested rights of his church — thus taking for granted a cynicism of 
venality which it would be difficult to parallel in the secular affairs 
of the most corrupt of courts. 1 Even the power to dispense from 
the vow of continence was occasionally turned to account in this 
manner. One of the accusations against John XXIII. was that for 
600 ducats he had released Jacques de Vitry, a Hospitaller, from his 
vows, had restored him to the world, and enabled him to marry. 2 
In fact, when a pope like Sixtus IV. was found who openly sold all 
preferment, who kept a regular scale for every grade from the cardi- 
nalate downwards, and who only varied from his fixed prices by 
putting up at auction some choice benefice, 3 it can hardly be expected 
that discipline could be enforced or the ideal of chastity realized. 

The aspirations of Christendom had culminated in the council of 
Bale in the most potent form known to the church universal. If 
the results were scarce perceptible while the influences of the council 
were yet recent, and while the antagonistic papacy was under the 
control of men sincerely desirous to promote the best interests of 
the church, such as Nicholas V. and Pius II., we can feel no wonder, 
if the darkness continued to grow thicker and deeper under the rule 
of such pontiffs as Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., and Alexander VI. 
Savonarola found an inexhaustible subject of declamation in the 



the leading minds of the period, and 
of unquestioned orthodoxy. He was a 
popular preacher, a doctor of theology, 
chaplain and secretary of the Count 
Palatine of the Rhine, and a bold dis- 
putant against the Hussites. He re- 
cords with his own hand that, as 
inquisitor, he convicted and burned, 
July 4th, 1429, at Liiders, an unfortu- 
nate heretic who denied the propriety 
of invoking the Virgin and the saints. 
Under the skilful management, how- 
ever, of Nicholas V. and Pius II. this 
spirit of independence died away, to 



again revive, in the next century, in a 
more determined form. 

1 Ludewig Reliq. Msctorum. XI 
415. — Under Boniface IX., at the 
commencement of the century, claims 
arising from simoniacal transactions 
were constantly and openly prosecuted 
in the court of the Papal Auditor. — 
Theod. a Niem de Yit. Joann. XXIII. 

2 Concil. Constantiens. Sess. xr. 

3 Steph. Infessurse Diar. Eoman. 
ann. 1484 (Eccard. Corp. Hist. III. 
1939-40). 



ITALY — FRANCE — ENGLAND. 



399 



fearful vices of the ecclesiastics of his times, whom he describes as 
ruffiani e mezzani. 1 In the kingdom of Naples the state sought to 
share with the church in the profits of impurity, and a regular tax 
was laid upon the concubines of ecclesiastics. In a document still 
preserved in the Neapolitan archives, Alfonso I. complains that this 
tax had not been paid for three years, and directs his bishops to 
compel its collection in their several dioceses. 2 In the assembly of 
the Trois Etats of France, held at Tours in 1484, the orator of the 
Estates, Jean de Rely, afterwards Bishop of Angers, in his official 
address to Charles VIII., declared it to be notorious that the religious 
orders had lost all devotion, discipline, and obedience to their rule, 
while the canons (and he was himself a canon of Paris) had sunk 
far below the laity in their morals, to the great scandal of the church. 3 
In England, the facts developed by the examination which Inno- 
cent VIII. in 1489 authorized Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
to make into the condition of the religious houses, present a state of 
affairs quite as bad. Henry VII. 's first Parliament, in 1485, had 
endeavored to accomplish some reform by passing an Act empower- 
ing the episcopal authorities to imprison all priests and monks con- 
victed of carnal lapses, 4 but this, like all similar legislation, whether 
secular or ecclesiastical, appears to have been useless. Innocent 
describes the monasteries, in his bull to the archbishop, as wholly 
fallen from their original discipline, and this is fully confirmed by 
the results of the visitation. The old and wealthy abbey of St. 
Albans, for instance, was little more than a den of prostitutes, with 
whom the monks lived openly and avowedly. In two priories under 
its jurisdiction the nuns had been turned out and their places filled 



1 "Si vous saviez tout ce que je 
sais ! des choses degoutantes ! des 
choses horribles ! vous en fremiriez ! 
Quand je pense a tout cela, a la vie 
que menent les pretres, je ne puis 
retenir mes larmes." And again, "Ma 
peggio ancora. Quello che sta la notte 
con la concubina, quell' altro con il 
garzone, e poi la mattina va a dire 
messa, pensa tu come la va. Che 
vuoi tu fare di quella messa?" — 
Jerome Savonarole d'apres les Docu- 
ments Originaux, par F. T. Perrens, 
pp. 71-2. Paris, 1856. 

2 Ap. Chavard, Le Celibat. des Pre- 
tres, p. 400. 



8 Masselin, Journal des Etats de 
Tours, pp. 197-99. 

"What were the teachings and the in- 
fluence on the people of such a priest- 
hood may be guessed from a remark in 
one of the sermons of Oliver Maillard, 
a celebrated Franciscan preacher of the 
period. "Sunt ne ibi mulieres et sa- 
cerdotes qui dicunt quod mulieres come- 
dentes venenum ad expellendum ma- 
teriam de matrice sua, ne foetus veniat 
ad partum, antequam anima rationalis 
introducatur, non peccant mortaliter?" 
— Ap. H. Estienne, Apol. pour Hero- 
dote Liv. I. chap. vi. 

4 1 Henr. VII. 4. 



400 



THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 



with courtezans, to whom the monks of St. Albans publicly resorted, 
indulging in all manner of shameless and riotous living, the details 
of which can well be spared. 1 These irregularities were emulated 
by the secular ecclesiastics. Among the records of the reign of 
Henry VII. is a memorial from the gentlemen and farmers of 
Carnarvonshire, complaining that the seduction of their wives and 
daughters was pursued systematically by the clergy. 2 That the 
prevalence of these practices was thoroughly understood is shown in 
a book of instructions for parish priests drawn up by a canon of 
Lilleshall about this period. In enumerating the causes for which a 
parson may shrive a man not of his own parish, he includes the case 
in which the penitent has committed sin with the concubine or 
daughter of his own parish priest. 3 

Spain was equally infected. The council of Aranda, in 1473, 
denounced bitterly the evil courses by which the clergy earned for 
themselves the wrath of God and the contempt of man, and it en- 
deavored to suppress the sempiternal vice by the means which had 
been so often ineffectually tried — visitations, fines, excommunication, 
suspension, forfeiture of benefice, and imprisonment — but all to as 
little purpose as before. 4 The trouble continued without abatement 
and the council of Seville, in 1512, felt itself obliged to repeat as 
usual all the old denunciations and penalties, including those against 
ecclesiastics who officiated at the marriages of their children, which 
it prohibited for the future under a fine of 2000 maravedis — a 
mulct which it likewise provided for those who committed the inde- 
cency of having their children as assistants in the solemnity of the 
Mass. 5 

What was the condition of morals in Germany may be inferred 
from some proceedings of the chapter of Brunswick in 1476. The 
canons intimate that the commission of scandals and crimes has 
reached a point at which there is danger of their losing the inesti- 



-i Wilkins III. 630-33. 

Yet in the letter of Archbishop Mor- 
ton to the abbot reciting all these enor- 
mities, he is not even threatened with 
deposition, but only invited to mend 
his ways. 

History of England, 



2 Eroude's 
Ch. in. 



8 Or gef hym self had done a synn9 
By the prestes sybbe kynne, 



Moder or suster, or hys lernmon 
Or by hys doghter gef he had on. 
John My re's Instructions for Parish 
Priests, p. 26 (Early English Text So- 
ciety, 1868). 

4 Concil. Arandens. ann. 1473 c. ix. 
(Aguirre V. 345-6). 

5 Concil. Hispalens. ann. 1512 can. 
xxvi., xxvii. (Aguirre V. 371-2). 



HUNGARY — THE NORTH OF EUROPE. 401 

mable privilege of exemption from episcopal jurisdiction. They 
therefore declare that for the future the canons, vicars, and officiating 
clergy ought not to keep their mistresses and concubines publicly in 
their houses, or live with them within the bounds of the church, and 
those who persist in doing so after three warnings shall be suspended 
from their prebends until they render due satisfaction. 1 In this 
curious glimpse into the domestic life of the cathedral close, it is 
evident that the worthy canons were moved by no shame for the pub- 
licity of their guilt, but only by a wholesome dread of giving to their 
bishop an excuse for procuring the forfeiture of their dearly prized 
right of self-judgment. 

The Hungarian church, by a canon dating as far back as 1382, 
had finally adopted a pecuniary mulct as the most efficacious mode of 
correcting offenders. The fine was five marks of current coin, and 
by granting one-half to the informer or archdeacon, and the other to 
the archiepiscopal chamber, it was reasonably hoped that the rule 
might be enforced. The guardians were not faithful, however, for 
two synods of Gran, one in 1450 and the other in 1480, reiterate 
the complaint, not only that the archdeacons and other officials kept 
the whole fine to themselves, but also, what was even worse, that 
they permitted the criminals to persevere in sin, in order to make 
money by allowing them to go unpunished. 2 This state of affairs 
was not to be wondered at if the description of his prelates by 
Matthias Corvinus be correct. They were worldly princes, whose 
energies were devoted to wringing from their flocks fabulous revenues 
to be squandered in riotous living on the hordes of cooks and concu- 
bines who pandered to their appetites. 3 The morals of the regular 
clergy were no better, for a Diet held by Vladislas II. in 1498 com- 
plained of the manner in which abbots and other monastic dignitaries 
enriched themselves from the revenues of their offices, and then, 
returning to the world, publicly took wives, to the disgrace of their 
order. 4 

In Pomerania the evil had at length partially cured itself, for the 
female companions of the clergy seem to have been regarded as wives 
in all but the blessing of the church. Benedict, Bishop of Camin, 



1 Statut. Eccles. in Braunschweig. 
cap. 75 (Mayer, Thes. Jur. Eccles. 
I. 124). 

2 Synod. Strigonens. ann. 1382, 1450, 
1480 (Batthyani III. 275, 481, 557). 



3 Galeoti Martii de dictis et factis 
Matthiae Eegis cap. xi. (Schwandtneri 
Ker. Hungar. Script.). 

4 Synod. Keg. ann. 1498 c. 16 (Bat- 
thyani I. 551). 

26 



402 



THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 



in 1492, held a synod in which he quaintly but vehemently objur- 
gates his ecclesiastics for this wickedness; declares that no man can 
part such couples joined by the devil; alludes to their offspring as 
beasts creeping over the earth, and has his spleen peculiarly stirred 
by the cloths of Leyden and costly ornaments with which the fair 
sinners were bedecked, to the scandal of honest women. 1 His indig- 
nation was wasted on a hardened generation, for his successor, Bishop 
Martin, on his accession to the see in 1499, found the custom still 
unchecked. The new bishop promptly summoned a synod at Sitten 
in 1500, where he reiterated the complaints of Benedict, adding that 
the priests convert the patrimony of Christ into marriage portions 
for their children, and procure the transmission of benefices from 
father to son, as though glorying in the perpetuation of their shame. 
What peculiarly exasperated the good prelate was that the place of 
honor was accorded as a matter of course to the priests and their 
consorts at all the merry-makings and festivities of their parishioners, 
which shows how fully these unions were recognized as legitimate, 
and, apparently, for prudential reasons, encouraged by the people. 2 

Similar customs, or worse, doubtless prevailed in Sleswick, for 
when Eggard was consecrated bishop in 1494, he signalized the com- 
mencement of his episcopate by forbidding his clergy to keep such 
female companions. The result was that before the year expired he 
was forced to abandon his see, and five years later he died, a 
miserable exile in Rome. 3 

The monastic orders were no better than the secular clergy. When 
Ximenes was made Provincial of the Franciscan order in Spain, he 
set himself earnestly at work to force the brethren to live according 
to the Rule. A large portion of them, known as Claustrals, led 
disorderly lives, almost purely secular, and refused absolutely to 
submit to the observance of their vows. King Ferdinand being 



1 "Wise Hist. Episc. Camin. c. 41. — 
These irregularities were not of recent 
introduction. The canon referred to 
is copied almost literally from a sy- 
nod held nearly forty years before by 
Bishop Henning. In fact, from the 
description given by the latter of the 
drinking, gambling, trading, and li- 
centiousness of the ecclesiastics of 
Camin, there was little of the clerical 
character about them. — Synod. Camin. 
ann. 1454 (Hartzheim V. 930). 



2 Wise Hist. Episc. Camin. c. 42.— 
Synod. Sedinens. c. 5. 

In West Prussia, in 1497, the synod 
of Ermeland expresses itself as scan- 
dalized by the priests taking their com- 
panions publicly to fairs and other 
gatherings, and, to put a stop to the 
practice, it offers to secret informers 
one-half of the fine imposed on such 
indiscretions. — Synod. Warmiens. ann. 
1497 c. xxxix. (Hartzheim V. 668). 

3 Boissen Chron. Slesvicens. ann. 
1494. 



THE MONASTIC OEDEES. 



403 



appealed to pronounced sentence of banishment upon them, and they 
absolutely preferred existence in exile to the insupportable yoke of 
their Order. Yet they considered themselves so aggrieved that when 
they left Toledo they marched in procession through the Puerta 
Visagra with a crucifix at their head, singing the 113th Psalm " In 
exitu Israel de Egypto." When Ximenes was promoted to the 
primatial see of Toledo, the malcontents appealed to the Vicar 
General of the Order in Rome, who came to Spain and warmly 
espoused their cause, being only forced to desist by the decided stand 
taken by Queen Isabella in favor of Ximenes. 1 It was the same 
with the other monastic orders. A bull of Alexander VI., issued in 
1496 for the purpose of reforming the Benedictines, describes the 
inhabitants of many establishments of both sexes in that ancient and 
honored institution as indulging in the most shameless profligacy ; 
and marriage itself was apparently not infrequently practised. 2 
Savonarola did not hesitate to declare that nuns in their convents 
became worse than harlots. 3 Even the strictest of all the orders — 
the Cistercian — yielded to the prevailing laxity. A general chapter, 
held in 1516, denounces the intolerable abuse indulged in by some 
abbots who threw off ail obedience to the rule, and dared to keep 
women under pretence of requiring their domestic services. 4 To 
fully appreciate the force of this indication, it is requisite to bear in 
mind the stringency of the regulations which forbade the foot of 
woman to pollute the sacred retirement of the Cistercian monas- 
teries. 5 



1 Eobles, Vida del Card. Ximenes de 
Cisneros, cap. xii., xiii. — Eobles was 
chaplain to Ximenes, and presumably 
derived his information from the car- 
dinal himself. 

2 Eursus in certis monasteriis diet 1 
ordinis, ipsaa moniales apertis claus- 
tris, indiflerenter omnes homines etiam 
suspectos intromittunt, ac extra mon- 
asteria in curiis, castris et plateis va- 
gantes, plura scandala committunt . . 
Similiter religiosi qui in sacris ordini- 
bus constituti non sunt, relicto habito 
regulari, matrimonium contrahere di- 
cuntur. . . . Proeterea omnes et sin- 
gulos monachos et moniales regulam 
S. Benedicti hujusmodi expresse vel 
tacite professos, qui habitum monas- 
ticum sine dispensatione legitima re- 
liquerunt aut matrimonia contraxe- 
runt, ad monasteria, si ilia exiverunt, 
redire et habitum monasticum ac 



velum nigrum reassumere dicta auc- 
toritate compellatis. — App. ad Chron. 
Cassinens. Ed. Dubreul, pp. 902-3. 

The words italicized would seem to 
indicate that monks and nuns occa- 
sionally married without even quit- 
ting their monasteries. 

3 Perrens, Jerome Savonarole, p. 84. 

4 Statut. Ord. Cisterc. ami. 1516 
(Martene Thesaur. IV. 1636-7). 

5 Thus, in 1193, the general chapter 
of the order promulgated the rule — 
"'.Si contigerit mulieres abbatiam or- 
dinis nostri ex consensu intrare, ipse 
abbas a patre abbate deponatur absque 
retractatione. Et quicumque sine con- 
scientia abbatis introduxerit, de domo 
ejiciatur, non reversurus, nisi per gene- 
rale capitulum." — (Capit. General. Cis- 
terc. ann. 1193 cap. 6 — apud Martene 
Thesaur. IV. 1276.) The strictness 



404 



THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY, 



The efforts constantly made to check these abuses produced little 
result. A Carthusian monk, writing in 1489, deplores the fact that 
while monasteries were everywhere being reformed, few if any of 
them maintained their morals, but returned to their old condition 
immediately on the death of the zealous fathers who had sought to 
improve them. 1 That condition is described by a Benedictine Abbot, 
the celebrated Trithemius, in general terms, as that of dens in which 
it was a crime to be without sin, their inhabitants for the most part 
being addicted to all manner of vices, and being monks only in name 
and vestment. 2 



with which this was enforced is illus- 
trated by the proceedings in 1205 
against the abbot of the celebrated 
house of Pontigny, because he had 
allowed the Queen of France and her 
train to be present at a sermon in the 
chapel and a procession in the cloisters, 
and to spend two nights in the in- 
firmary. He adduced in his defence 
a special rescript of the pope and a 
permission from the head of the order 
in favor of the queen, but these were 
pronounced insufficient, and sentence 
was passed that he merited instant 
deposition "quia tarn enorme factum 
sustinuit, in totius ordinis injuriam," 
but that in consequence of the power- 
ful intercession of the Archbishop of 
Eheims and other bishops, he was 
allowed to escape with lighter punish- 
ment. — (Hist. Monast. Pontiniac. — 
Martene Thesaur. III. 1245.) 

This rule, indeed, was almost uni- 
versal in the ancient monasteries. 
The great abbey of St. Martin of 
Tours preserved it inviolate until the 
incursions of the Northmen rendered 
the house an asylum for the inhabi- 
tants of the surrounding territory, and 
the prohibition was subsequently re- 
vived and formallv approved by Leo 
VII. in 938 (Leonis PP. VII. Epist. 
vi.). In that of Sithieu, from the 
time of its foundation early in the 
seventh century, it was preserved 
without infraction for more than three 
centuries. Even the license of the 
Carlovingian revolution did not cause 
its inobservance; and when, amid the 
disorders of the tenth century, the 
Counts of Flanders became lay abbots 
of the convent, and discipline was 
almost forgotten, the mediation of two 
bishops was required to obtain per- 
mission, about the year 940, for Adela, 
Countess of Flanders, prostrated with 
mortal sickness, to be carried in and 



laid before the altar, where she miracu- 
lously recovered. — (De Mirac. S. Ber- 
tin. Lib. II. c. 12 — Chron. S. Bertin. 
c. 23, 24.) 

So when Boniface founded the abbey 
of Fulda, he prohibited the entrance of 
women in any of the buildings, even 
including the church. The rule was 
preserved uninfringed through all the 
license of the tenth and eleventh cen- 
turies, and when, in 1132, the Emperor 
Lothair came to Fulda to celebrate 
Pentecost, his empress was not allowed 
to witness the ceremonies. So when 
Frederic Barbarossa, in 1135, spent his 
Easter there, he was not permitted to 
enter the town, because his wife was 
with him. In 1398 Boniface IX., at 
the request of the Abbot John Merlaw, 
relaxed the rule and permitted women 
to attend at the services of the church 
— shortly after which it was destroyed 
by lightning, as a warning for the fu- 
ture. — (Paullini Chron. Badeslebiens. 
$ viii.) — An equally convincing indica- 
tion of the favor with which this regu- 
lation was regarded by Heaven was 
afforded when Abbot Helisacar, about 
the year 830, introduced it in the cele- 
brated monastery of St. Biquier, and 
immediately the number of miracles 
worked by the relics of the Saint in- 
creased in a notable degree (Chron. 
Centulensis Lib. ill. cap. iv). — At 
the Grande Chartreuse, founded by St. 
Bruno towards the end of the eleventh 
century, women were not even allowed 
to enter on the lands of the community. 
— Chart. S. Hugon. G-ratianopolit. 
(Patrolog. T. 166, p. 1571). 

1 Anon. Carthus. de Belig. Orig. cap. 
xl. (Martene Ampliss. Coll. VI. 93). 

2 Johan. de Trittenheim Lib. Lugu- 
bris de Statu et Kuina Monast. Ordinis 
cap. iii. 



EFFORTS TO ABROGATE CELIBACY. 



405 



That the clergy, as a body, had become a stench in the nostrils of 
the people is evident from the immense applause which greeted all 
attacks upon them. In 1476 a rustic prophet arose in the hamlet of 
Niklaushausen, in the diocese of Wurzburg, who was a fit precursor 
of Muncer and John of Leyden. John of Niklaushausen was a 
swineherd, who professed himself inspired by the Virgin Mary. 
From the Rhine-lands to Misnia, and from Saxony to Bavaria, im- 
mense multitudes flocked to hear him, so that at times he preached 
to crowds of twenty and thirty thousand men. His doctrines were 
revolutionary, for he denounced oppression both secular and clerical ; 
but he was particularly severe upon the vices of the ecclesiastical 
body. A special revelation of the Virgin had informed him that 
God could no longer endure them, and that the world could not, 
without a speedy reformation, be saved from the divine wrath conse- 
quent upon them. 1 The unfortunate man was seized by the Bishop 
of Wurzburg; the fanatical zeal of his unarmed followers was easily 
subdued, and he expiated at the stake his revolt against the powers 
that were. 

Such being the state of ecclesiastical morality throughout Europe, 
there can be little wonder if reflecting men sought occasionally to 
reform it in the only rational manner — not by an endless iteration of 
canons, obsolete as soon as published, or by ingeniously varied 
penalties, easily evaded or compounded — but by restoring to the 
minister of Christ the right to indulge legitimately the affections 
which bigotry might pervert, but could never eradicate. Even as 
early as the close of the thirteenth century, the high authority of 
Bishop William Durand had acknowledged the inefficacy of penal 
legislation, and had suggested the discipline of the Greek church as 
affording a remedy worthy of consideration. 2 As the depravity of 
the church increased, and as the minds of men gradually awoke from 
the slumber of the dark ages, and shook off the blind reverence for 



1 Anmintia populo fideli meo, et die 
quod Films meus avaritiam, superbiam 
et luxuriam clericorum et sacerdotum 
amplius sustinere nee possit nee velit. 
TJnde nisi se quantocius emendaverint, 
totus mundus propter eorum scelera 
periclitabitur. — Trithem. Chron. Hir- 
saug. ann. 1476. 

2 Quum pene in omnibus conciliis et 
a plerisque Romanis pontificibus super 
cohibenda et punienda clericorum in- 
continentia, et eorum honestate servanda 



mulla hactenus emanaverint constituta ; 
et nullatenus ipsorum reformari quiverit 
correctio morum: . . . videretur pen- 
sandum an expediret et posset provideri 
quod in ecclesia Occidental^ quantum 
ad votum continentise, servaretur con- 
suetudo ecclesiae Orientalis, quantum 
ad promovendos, potissime quum tem- 
pore Apostolorum consuetudo ecclesise 
Orientalis servaretur. — Durand. de 
Modo G-eneral. Concil. P. n. rubr. 46 
(Calixtus, p. 537). 



406 



THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 



tradition, the suggestion presented itself with renewed force. At 
the council of Constance Cardinal Zabarella did not hesitate to sug- 
gest that if the concubinary practices of the clergy could not be 
suppressed it would be better to concede to them the privilege of 
marriage, 1 and shortly after the failure of the council to effect a 
reform had became apparent, Guillaume Saignet wrote a tract en- 
titled "Lamentatio ob Cselibatum Sacerdotum" in which he attacked 
the existing system, and called forth a rejoinder from Gerson. When 
the council of Bale was earnestly engaged in the endeavor to restore 
forgotten discipline, the Emperor Sigismund laid before it a formula 
of reformation which embraced the restoration of marriage to the 
clergy. His orator drew a fearful picture of the evils caused by the 
rule of celibacy — evils acknowledged by every one in the assembly 
— and urged that as it had produced more injury than benefit, the 
wiser course would be to follow the example of the Greek church. 2 
A majority of the council assented to the principle, but shrank from 
the bold step of adopting it. Eugenius IV. had just been forced to 
acknowledge the legitimacy of the body as an cecumenic council ; the 
strife with the papacy might again break forth at any moment, and 
it was not politic to venture on innovations too audacious. The con- 
servatives, therefore, skilfully eluded the question by postponing it 
to a more favorable time, and the postponement was fatal. 

One of the most celebrated members of the council, Cardinal 
Nicholas Tudeschi, surnamed Panormitanus, whose preeminence as 
an expounder of the canon law won for him the titles of " Canonis- 
tarum Princeps" and "Lucerna Juris," declared that the celibacy of 
the clergy was not essential to ordination or enjoined by divine law ; 
and he records his unhesitating opinion that the question should be 
left to the option of the individual — those who had resolution to pre- 
serve their purity being the most worthy, while those who had not 
would be spared the guilt which disgraced them. 3 So iEneas Sylvius, 
who as Pius II. filled the pontifical throne from 1458 to 1464, and 
who knew by experience how easy it was to yield to the temptations 



1 Card. Zabarellse Capit. Agend. in 
Concil. Constant, cap. xii. (Yon der 
Hardt T. I. P. ix. p. 525). 

2 Zaccaria, ISTuova Giustificaz. pp. 
121-2.— Milman, Latin Christ. Book 
xin. chap. 12. 

3 Not having the works of Tudeschi 
to refer to, I give his remarks as quoted 
by Yilladiego (Fuero Juzgo, p. 177, 



No. 85) from Gloss, in cap. olim, de 
cleric, conjug. — "Quod deberet eccle- 
sia facere sicut bonus medicus, ut si 
medicina, experientia docente, potius 
officit quam prodit, earn tollat; sic 
eorum voluntati relinqueretur, ita ut 
sacerdos qui abstinere noluisset, posset 
uxorem ducere, cum quotidie illicito 
coitu maculentur." 



OPPOSITION TO CELIBACY. 



407 



of the flesh, is reported to have said that marriage had been denied 
to priests for good and sufficient reasons, but that still stronger ones 
now required its restoration. 1 Indeed, when arguing before the 
Council of Bale in favor of the election of Amedeus of Savoy to the 
papacy, he had not scrupled to declare that a married priesthood 
would be the salvation of many who were damned in celibacy. 2 
And we have already seen that Eugenius IV., in 1441, and Alex- 
ander VI., in 1496, granted permission of marriage to several 
military orders, as the only mode of removing the scandalous license 
prevailing among them. 

This question of the power of the pope to dispense with the 
necessity of celibacy seems to have attracted some attention about 
this period. In 1505, Geoffroy Boussard, afterwards Chancellor of 
the University of Paris, published a tract wherein he argued that 
priestly continence was simply a human and not a divine ordinance, 
and that the pope was fully empowered to relax the rule in special 
cases, though he could not abolish wholly an institution of such long 
continuance which had received the assent of so many holy fathers 
and general councils. At the same time, one of his arguments in 
favor of its enforcement shows how little respect was left in the minds 
of all thinking men for the claims of the church to veneration. He 
quotes Bonaventura to the effect that if bishops and archbishops had 
license to marry they would rob the church of all its property, and 
none would be left for the poor, for, he adds, " since already they 
seize the goods of the church for the benefit of distant relatives, what 
would they not do if they had legitimate children of their own?" 3 



When the advantages and the necessity of celibacy thus were 
doubted by the highest authorities in the church, it is no wonder if 
those who were disposed to question the traditions of the past were 
led to reject it altogether. In 1479 John Burckhardt, of Oberwesel, 
graduate of Tubingen, and Doctor of Theology, in his capacity of 
preacher at Worms, openly disseminated doctrines which differed in 
the main but little from those of Wickliffe and Huss. He denied 
the authority of popes, councils, and the fathers of the church to 
regulate matters either of faith or discipline. The Scripture was the 



1 Sacerdotibus magna rati one sublatas 
nuptias, majori restituendas videri. — 
Platina in Vit. Pii II. 



2 iEnese Sylvii de Concil. Basil. Lib. 
ii. 

3 De Continentia Sacerdotum, Niirnb. 
1510, Prop. 6, 7. 



408 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 

only standard, and no one had a right to interpret it for his brethren. 
The received observances of religion, prayers, fasts, indulgences, 
were all swept away, and universal liberty of conscience proclaimed 
to all. Of course, sacerdotal celibacy shared the same fate, as a 
superstitious observance, contrived by papal ingenuity in opposition 
to evangelical simplicity. 1 Thus his intrepid logic far outstripped 
the views of his predecessors, and Luther afterwards acknowledged 
the similarity between his teachings and those of John of Oberwesel. 
Yet he had not the spirit of martyrdom, and the Inquisition speedily 
forced him to a recantation, which was of little avail, for he soon 
after perished miserably in the dungeon in which he had been thrust. 2 
Still more remarkable as an indication of the growing spirit of in- 
dependence was an event which in July, 1485, disturbed the stagna- 
tion of the centre of theological orthodoxy — the Sorbonne. A 
certain Jean Laillier, priest and licentiate in theology, aspiring to 
the doctorate, prepared his thesis or " Sorbonique," in which he 
broached various propositions savoring strongly of extreme Lollardry* 
He denied the supremacy of the pope, and indeed reduced the 
hierarchy to the level of simple priesthood ; he rejected confession, 
absolution, and indulgences ; he refused to acknowledge the authority 
of tradition and legends, and insisted that the fasts enjoined by the 
church had no claim to observance. Celibacy was not likely to 
escape so audacious an inquirer, and accordingly, among his postu- 
lates were three, declaring that a priest clandestinely married 
required no penitence; that the Eastern clergy committed no sin in 
marrying, nor would the priests of the Western church, if they were 
to follow the example ; and that celibacy originated in 1073, in the 
decretals of Gregory VII., whose power to introduce the rule he 
more than questioned. The Sorbonne, as might be anticipated, 
refused the doctorate to so rank a heretic, and Laillier had the bold- 
ness not only to preach his doctrines publicly, but even to appeal to 
the Parlement for the purpose of forcing his admission to the 
Sorbonne. The Parlement referred the matter to the Bishop of 
Paris and to the Inquisitor; Laillier's audacity failed him, and he 
agreed to recant. 3 In Poland, too, there were symptoms of similar 
revolt against the established ordinances of the church, as shown 



1 Trithem. Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1479. 

2 Serrarii Hist. Rer. Mogunt. Lib. I. c. 34. 

3 Fleury, Hist. Eccles. Liv. cxvi. No. 30-38. 



OPPOSITION TO CELIBACY. 409 

in a book published at Cracow in 1504, "De Matrimonia Sacer- 
dotum." 1 

The corruption of the church establishment, in fact, had reached 
a point which the dawning enlightenment of the age could not much 
longer endure. The power which had been intrusted to it, when it 
was the only representative of culture and progress, had been devoted 
to selfish purposes, and had become the instrument of unmitigated 
oppression in all the details of daily life. The immunity which had 
been necessary to its existence through centuries of anarchy had 
become the shield of unimaginable vices. The wealth, so freely 
lavished upon it by the veneration of Christendom, was wasted in 
the vilest excesses. All efforts at reformation from within had failed ; 
all attempts at reformation from without had been successfully 
crushed and sternly punished. Intoxicated with centuries of domin- 
ation, the muttered thunders of growing popular discontent were 
unheeded, and its claims to spiritual and temporal authority were 
asserted with increasing vehemence, while its corruptions were daily 
displayed before the people with more careless cynicism. There 
appeared to be no desire on the part of the great body of the clergy 
to make even a pretence of the virtue and piety on which were 
based their claims for reverence, while the laity were daily growing 
less reverent, were rising in intelligence, and were becoming more 
inclined to question where their fathers had been content to believe. 
Such a complication could have but one result. 

1 Krasniski, Eeformation in Poland, I. 110. 



XXV. 

THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 






The opening of the sixteenth century witnessed an ominous 
breaking down of the landmarks of thought. The revival of letters, 
which was fast rendering learning the privilege of all men in place 
of the special province of the legal and clerical professions; the dis- 
covery of America, which destroyed reverence for primaeval tradition, 
and accustomed men's minds to the idea that startling novelties 
might yet be truths ; the invention of printing, which placed within 
the reach of all inquirers who had a tincture of education the sacred 
writings for investigation and interpretation and enabled the thinker 
and the innovator at once to command an audience and disseminate 
his views in remote regions; the European wars, commencing with 
the Neapolitan conquest of Charles VIII., which brought the nations 
into closer contact with each other, and carried the seeds of culture, 
civilization, and unbelief from Italy to the farthest Thule; all these 
causes, with others less notable, had been silently but effectually 
wearing out the remnants of that pious and unquestioning veneration 
which for ages had lain like a spell on the human mind. 

In this bustling movement of politics and commerce, arts and 
arms, science and letters, religion could not expect to escape the 
spirit of universal inquiry. Even before opinion had advanced far 
enough to justify examination into doctrinal points and dogmas, there 
was a general readiness to regard the shortcomings of sacerdotalism, 
in the administration of its sacred trust, with a freedom of criticism 
which could not long fail to destroy the respect for claims of irrefrag- 
able authority. John of England and the Emperor Otho might 
gratify individual spite, in the intoxication of anticipated triumph, 
by insultingly defying the sacerdotal power. Philippe-le-Bel, a man 
ar in advance of his age, might reduce the papacy to temporary 
subjection by means of rare instruments such as Guillaume de 



KEVOLT AGAINST THE CHURCH. 



411 



Nogaret. Philippe de Valois, with the aid of his civil lawyers, 
might essay to limit the extent of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Wick- 
liffe, and Huss, and Savonarola might raise the standard of opposi- 
tion to papal usurpation — but these were sporadic instances of 
rebellion, resulting either from the selfish ambition of rulers or the 
fanatical enthusiasm of individuals, unsupported by the concurrent 
opinion of the masses of the people, and their permanent results 
were rather remote than direct. At the period to which we have 
arrived, however, the disposition to criticise the abuses of the eccle- 
siastical system, to note its shortcomings, and to apply remedial 
measures was general, and savored little of the respect which an 
infallible church had for so many centuries inculcated as one of the 
first of Christian duties. Its past services were forgotten in present 
wrongs. Its pretensions had, at one time, enabled it to be the pro- 
tector of the feeble, and the sole defence of the helpless ; but that 
time had passed. Settled institutions were fast replacing anarchy 
throughout Europe, and its all-pervading authority would no longer 
have been in place, even if exercised for the common benefit. When 
it was notorious, however, that the powers and immunities claimed 
by the church were everywhere employed for the vilest ends, their 
anachronism became too palpable, and their destruction was only a 
question of time. 

Signs of the coming storm were not wanting. In 1510 a series 
of complaints against the tyranny and extortion of Rome was sol- 
emnly presented to the emperor. The German churches, it was 
asserted, were confided by the successors of St. Peter to the care of 
those who were better fitted to be keepers of mules than pastors of 
men, and the pope was significantly told that he should act more 
tenderly and kindly to his children of Teutonic race, lest there 
might arise a persecution against the priesthood, or a general defec- 
tion from the Holy See, after the manner of the Hussites. 1 The 
emperor was warned, in his efforts to obtain the desired reform, not 
to incur the censures and enmity of the pope, in terms which show 
that only the political effects of excommunication were dreaded, and 
that its spiritual thunders had lost their terrors. He was further 
cautioned against the prelates in general, and the mendicant friars 



1 Gravamina German. Nationis, No. 
vn. — Kerned, contra Gravamina (Fre- 
her. et Struv. II. 677-8). 



In the previous century some remon- 
strances against grievances had been 
uttered, but in a very different tone 
from this. 



412 



THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 



in particular, in a manner denoting how little reverence was left for 
them in the popular mind, and how thoroughly the whole ecclesi- 
astical system had become a burden and reproach, a thing of the 
past, an excrescence on society, and no longer an integral part of 
every man's life, and the great motive power of Christendom. 1 

It was evident that the age was rapidly outstripping the church, 
and that the latter, to maintain its influence and position, must con- 
form to the necessities of progress and enlightenment. On previous 
occasions it had done so, and had, with marvellous tact and readi- 
ness, adapted itself to the exigencies of the situation in the long 
series of vicissitudes which had ended by placing it supreme over 
Europe. But centuries of almost uninterrupted prosperity had 
hardened it. The corruption which attends upon wealth had ren- 
dered wealth a necessity, and that wealth could only be had by per- 
petuating and increasing the abuses which caused ominous murmurs 
of discontent in those nations not fortunate enough to be defended 
by Concordats or Pragmatic Sanctions. The church had lost its 
suppleness, and was immovable. A reform such as was demanded, 
while increasing its influence over the souls of men, would have 
deprived it of control over their purses ; reform meant poverty. 
The sumter-mule loaded with gold, wrung from the humble pittance 
of the Westphalian peasant, under pretext of prosecuting the war 
against the infidel, would no longer cross the Alps to stimulate with 
its treasure the mighty genius of Michael Angelo, or the fascinating 
tenderness of Raphael ; to provide princely revenues for the bastards 
of a pope, or to pay mercenaries who were to win them cities and 
lordships ; to fill the antechamber of a cardinal with parasites, and 
to deck his mistresses with the silks and jewels of Ind; to feed needy 
men of letters and scurrilous poets ; to soothe the itching palms of 
the Rota, and to enable all Rome to live on the tribute so cunningly 
exacted of the barbarian. 2 The wretched ending of the council of 



1 Avisamenta ad Cassar. Majest. 
(Ibid. p. 680). 

2 "When Diether was elected Arch- 
bishop of Mainz, in 1459, his envoys 
sent to obtain his confirmation from 
Pius II. were stupefied with a demand 
for 20,506 florins — more than double the 
amount of annates previously assessed 
on the see. He refused to yield to the 
demand, but by a little sharp practice 
between the Apostolic Chamber and 



the Roman bankers he became en- 
tangled, and on his persistent refusal 
he was prosecuted for the amount, de- 
posed by the pope, and Adolph of Nas- 
sau appointed in his place, leading to a 
bloody war and the devastation of city 
and territory. — Appell. Dom. Dytheri 
(Senckenberg. Selecta Juris T. IV. p. 
393).— Cf. Helwich de Dissidio Mogun- 
tino (Rer. Moguntiac. Script. T. II.). 
This is probably the fraud alluded to 
by the Diet of 1510, where it was com- 



PKOGRESS OF INSUBORDINATION. 



413 



Bale rendered any internal reformation impossible which did not 
derive its initiative and inspiration from Rome, as was shown by the 
failure of the council of Pisa. In Rome, it would have required 
the energy of Hildebrand, the stern self-reliance of Innocent, the 
unworldly asceticism of Celestin combined, to even essay a reform 
which threatened destruction so complete to all the interests accumu- 
lated by sacerdotalism around the Eternal City. Leo X. was neither 
Hildebrand, nor Innocent, nor Celestin. With his voluptuous nature, 
elegant culture, and easy temper, it is no wonder that he failed to 
read aright the signs of the times, and that he did not even recog- 
nize the necessity which should impose upon him a task so utterly 
beyond his powers. The fifth council of Lateran had no practical 
result. Blindly he plunged on; money must be had at any cost, 
until the salvation mongering of Tetzel, little if any worse than that 
of his predecessors, could no longer bear the critical spirit of the 
age, and Teutonic insubordination at length found a mouth-piece in 
the Monk of Wittenberg. 

It would be a mistake to credit Luther with the Reformation. 
His bold spirit and masculine character gave to him the front place, 
and drew around him the less daring minds who were glad to have 
a leader to whom to refer their doubts, and on whom their responsi- 
bility might partly rest; yet Luther was but the exponent of a public 
sentiment which had long been gaining strength, and which in any 
case would not have lacked expression. In that great movement of 
the human mind he was not the cause, but the instrument. Had his 



plained that the annates of the see of 
Mainz were raised from 10,000 florins 
to 25,000 ; and this latter sum was ex- 
acted seven times in one generation, 
resulting in taxation on the peasantry 
so severe that an insurrection against 
the clergy was threatened. — Remed. 
contra Gravam. (Freher. et Struv. II. 
678). 

In the complaint made to Adrian 
VI. , in 1523, by the Diet of Nurnberg, 
it is asserted that three generals of the 
mendicant orders at Rome had pur- 
chased the cardinalate with gold wrung 
from Germany. — Gravam. Nationis 
German, cap. lxxiii. — ap. Le Plat, 
Monument. Concil. Trident. II. 203. 

The general popular opinion of the 
Roman court is manifested in the Epis- 
tolse Obscurorum Virorum, when speak- 
ing of the quarrel between Eeuchlin 
and the theologians, which had been 



carried before the papal tribunal — "Si 
Papa est pro theologi, tunc non timeo ; 
etiam audivi ab uno notabili viro, qui 
est oflicialis curiae, qui dixit. Quid 
nobis hie cum Uteris ? Si Eeuchlin 
habet pecuniam, mittat hue : quia in 
curia oportet habere pecunias, alias 
nihil potest expedire." 

That this estimate of the papal curia 
was shared by the orthodox is shown 
in the story told of Pierre Danes, 
Bishop of Vaur, who in 1545 was sent 
as ambassador by Francis I. to the 
Council of Trent. In debate a French 
theologian was inveighing against the 
corruptions of the Eota, when an Italian 
ecclesiastic sneeringly cried out, " Gal- 
lus cantat." Danes promptly rejoined, 
" Utinam illo gallicinio Petrus ad resi- 
piscentiam et fletum excitetur." — Le 
Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. VII. 
224. 



r 



414 



THE REFOEMATION IN GEEMANY 



great opponent Erasmus enjoyed the physical vigor and practical 
boldness of Luther, he would have been handed down as the heresi- 
arch of the sixteenth century. 1 He, too, had borne his full share 
in preparing the minds of men for what was to come. The whole 
structure of sacerdotalism felt the blows of his irreverential spirit* 
which boldly declared that the Scriptures alone contained what was 
necessary to salvation. 2 Theological subtleties and priestly observ- 
ances were alike useless or worse than useless. For the living, it 
was idle to attend mass ; for the dead, it was folly to look to such a 
means for extrication from purgatory. 3 The confessional was to be 
visited only as a formal prerequisite to partaking the Eucharist; 4 
pilgrimages and the veneration of relics were ridiculed with a reck- 
less freedom which showed that the advance of enlightenment had 
utterly destroyed the reverence of the past. 5 Nothing, indeed, can 
give us a more thorough conviction of the readiness of the public to 
welcome a radical change than the wealth of indignant bitterness 
which Erasmus, himself a canon regular and a priest, heaps upon all 
orders of the church, and the immense applause which everywhere 
greeted his attacks. His sarcastic humor, his biting satire, his ex- 
quisite ridicule, nowhere find a more congenial subject than the 
vices of the monks, the priests, the prelates, the cardinals, and even 
of the pope himself, until even Luther, as late as 1517, feels con- 



1 The Epist. Obscur. Viror. probably 
reflects the general sentiment of the 
conservatives of the time in denounc- 
ing Erasmus and the learned wits as 
heretics. "Quia juvenes volunt se 
sequiparare senibus, et discipuli magis- 
tris, et juristse theologis, et est magna 
confusio, et surgunt multi hoeretici et 
pseudochristiani, Iohann. Eeuchlin, 
Erasmus Boterodamus : Bilibaldus 
nescio quis, et Ulricus Huttenus, Her- 
mannus Buschius, Jacobus Wimphe- 
lingus, qui scripsit contra Augusti- 
nenses, et Sebastianus Brandt, qui 
scripsit contra prasdicatores, etc." 

So, at a later date, after Luther had 
arisen, the " Conciliabulum Theologis- 
tarum" classes them together " Habeo 
etiam ego unum spiritum familiarem; 
ilium ego volo mittere ad Lutherum et 
Erasmum de nocte in lectum, ut eos 
tribulet et vexet. ' ' 

2 Erasmi Colloq. Confabulatio Pia. 

3 Ibid. See also the Encomium 
Morise. — "Nam quid dicam de iis qui 
sibi fictis scelerum condonationibus 



suavissime blandiuntur, ac purgatorii 
spatia veluti clepsydris metiuntur, se- 
cula, annos, menses, dies, horas, tan- 
quam e tabula mathematica citra ullum 
errorem dimentientes?" 

4 Confabulatio Pia (Colloquia). 

5 Speaking of the Virgin's milk and 
the countless relics of the cross every- 
where exposed to the adoration of the 
pious, he exclaims, "O matrem filio 
simillimam ! ille nobis tantum sangui- 
nis reliquit in terris ; ha?c tantum lactis 
quantum vix credibile est esse posse uni 
mulieri uniparas, etiamsi nihil bibisset 
infans .... Idem caussantur de cruce 
Domini, quae privatum ac publice tot 
locis ostenditur, ut si fragmenta con- 
ferantur in unum, navis onerarire jus- 
tum onus videri possint ; et tamen 
totam crucem suam bajulavit Domi- 
nus " — to which he makes a pious 
interlocutor reply, "Novum fortasse 
dici possit; mirum nequaquam, quum 
Dominus, qui haec auget pro suo arbi- 
trio, sit omnipotens." — Colloq. Pere- 
grinat. Eeligionis. 



ERASMUS AND VON HUTTEN. 



415 



strained to deplore that the evils which afflicted the church should 
be thus exposed to derision. 1 It affords a curious illustration of the 
times to read those writings which a century earlier would have con- 
signed him to the dungeon or the stake, and to reflect that he was 
not only the admiration of both the learned and the vulgar of Europe, 
but also the petted protege of king and kaisar, the correspondent of 
popes, and finally the champion of the system which he had so ruth- 
lessly reviled, and which he never ceased to deplore. 2 The extra- 
ordinary favor with which his works were received by all classes 
shows how fully he was justified in the indignation which he so un- 
sparingly lavished on clerical abuses, and how eagerly the public 
appreciated one who could so well express that which was felt by all. 
Equally significant was the popularity of the " Epistolae Obscurorum 
Virorum," in which the learned wits of the new school poured forth 
upon the clergy a broad and homely ridicule which exactly suited 
the taste of the age; 3 while Cornelius Agrippa more than rivalled 



1 Supplement. Epist. M. Lutheri, 
No. II. (Halee, 1703). 

2 The popular view of the priesthood 
is well summed up by Erasmus in the 
following dialogue: "Cocles, Cur 
mavis sacerdotium quam uxorem? — 
Pamphagus, Quia mihi placet otium. 
Arridet Epicurea vita. — Co. At mea 
sententia suavius vivunt, quibus est 
lepida puella domi, quam complectan- 
tur, quoties libet. — Pam. Sed adde, 
nonnunquam quum non libet. Amo 
voluptatem perpetuam. Qui ducit 
uxorem, uno mense felix est: cui con- 
tingit optimum sacerdotium, in om- 
nem usque vitam fruitur gaudio. — 
Co. Sed tristis est solitudo, adeo ut 
nee Adam suaviter victurus fuerit in 
Paradiso nisi deus illi adjunxisset 
Evam. — Pam. Non deerit Eva cui sit 
opulentum sacerdotium," etc. — Erasmi 
Colloq. de Captandis Sacerdotiis. 

It is, however, perhaps, in the " En- 
comium Moriaa" that he gives fullest 
rein to his bitter satire. His own sad 
experience of conventual life gave 
him special opportunity of declaiming 
against the monks " qui se vulgo religi- 
osos ac monachos appellant, utroque 
falsissimo cognomine, quum et bona 
pars istorum longissime absit a religi- 
one, et nulli magis omnibus locis sint 
obvii." Their habit, their observances, 
their discipline, their ignorance, idle- 
ness, vices, are recounted at great 
length and with the most stinging 



ridicule, and he makes Folly dismiss 
them with the contemptuous valedic- 
tion, " Verum ego istos histriones, tarn 
ingratos beneficiorum meorum dissimu- 
lators quam improbos simulatores pie- 
tatis libenter relinquo." The secular 
priesthood, the bishops, and even the 
pope himself, are treated with little 
more respect, and every class of the 
ecclesiastical body is stigmatized as 
endeavoring to thrust upon others the 
care of the flock and industrious only 
in shearing the sheep. 

The "Encomium Morise " had an 
immediate and immense success. 
Numberless editions were required to 
supply the avidity of the learned, 
and it was immediately translated 
into almost every language of Europe 
for the benefit of the unlearned. It 
appeared in 1509 ; the Colloquies in 
1516. — "When these works had pro- 
duced their result, their dangerous 
tendencies were discovered, and they 
enjoyed the honor of being included 
in the first Index Expurgatorius (App. 
Concil. Trident). Cardinal Caraffa, 
indeed, in 1538, had urged upon Paul 
III. the propriety of excluding the 
Colloquies from use in schools as a 
text-book for students. — Concil. de 
Emend. Eccles. (Le Plat, Monument. 
Concil. Trident. II. 602). 

3 The "Epistohe Obscurorum Viro- 
rum ' ' was certainly published before 
1516, probably in 1515 (Ebert, Bib- 



416 



THE KEFOEMATION IN GERMANY. 



Erasmus in the wealth of vigorous denunciation with which he 
lashed the vices of all the orders of ecclesiastics, from the pope to 
the beguine. 1 

Not less indicative of the dangerous state of opinion was an 
address delivered in the Diet held at Augsburg in 1518, when the 
legates of Leo X. appealed to Germany for a tithe to assist in carry- 
ing on the war against the Turk. The orator who replied to them 
did not restrain his indignation at the deplorable condition of the 
church, which he attributed solely to the worldly ambition of the 
popes. Since they had united temporal with spiritual dominion — 
or, rather, since they had allowed temporal interests to divert them 
wholly from their spiritual duties — all had gone amiss. Christendom 
was despoiled from without, and filled with tumult within. Religion 
was openly contemned ; Christ was daily bought and sold ; the sheep 
were shorn, and the pastor took no care of them. He did not even 
hesitate to charge, with emphasis and at much detail, that the money 
extorted from Germany under pious pretexts was squandered in 
Italy on the private quarrels and for the aggrandizement of the 
papal houses, and those of the members of the sacred college. 2 All 
other nations were protected from papal rapacity and tyranny by 
formal agreements. Germany alone was surrendered defenceless, 
and not only were her bishops plundered but even the smallest 
benefice could not be confirmed without the recipient running the 
gauntlet of a horde of officials whose exactions forced him to sell the 
very furniture of his church. As the rules of law and the dictates of 
justice were equally disregarded, the popular sentiment was becoming 
openly hostile to the church. 3 A state of feeling which dictated and 
permitted such a declaration from the supreme representative body 
of the empire, when brought into collision with the pretensions of 
the Holy See, now more exaggerated than ever, could have but one 
result — Revolution. 



liog. Diet. s. v.). — It is equally severe 
upon the monks — "Tunc ille dixit: 
ego distinguo de monachis, quia ac- 
cipiuntur tribus modis. Primo, pro 
Sanctis et utilibus, sed illi sunt in 
ccelo. Secundo, pro nee utilibus nee 
inutilibus, et illi sunt picti in eccle- 
sia. Tertio modo pro illis qui adhuc 
vivunt, et illi multis nocent, etiam 
non sunt sancti, quia ita superbi sunt 
sicut unus saecularium. Et ita liben- 
ter habent pecunias et pulchras mu- 
lieres," etc. And again, " Ubi enim 



diabolus pervenire vel aliquid efficere 
non potest, ibi semper mittit unam 
malam antiquam vetulam vel unum 
monachum." 

1 De Vanitate Scientiarum cap. lxi., 
lxii., lxiv. 

2 Orat. in Comit. Augustan. (Freher. 
et Struv. II. 702.) 

3 Bartholini Comment, de Comit. 
Augustens. ann. 1518 (Senckenberg. 
Selecta Juris T. IV. pp. 669-70). 



LUTHER'S HESITATION. 



417 



With all this license Germany was still, by the force of circum- 
stances, less independent of the papacy than any other Tramontane 
power. What was going on elsewhere in Europe may be guessed from 
the humiliating conditions exacted in 1517 of Silvester Darius, the 
papal collector, on his assuming the functions of his important office 
in England. He bound himself by oath not to execute any letters 
or mandates of the pope injurious to the king, the kingdom, or the 
laws ; not to transmit from England to Rome, without a special royal 
license, any gold, or silver, or bills of exchange; not to leave the 
kingdom himself without a special license under the great seal ; with 
other less notable restrictions, the practical effect of all being to place 
him and his duties wholly under the control of the king. 1 The 
position of England had changed since the days of Innocent and 
John. Had the dissensions of Germany permitted equal progress, 
Luther might perhaps have only been known as an obscure but 
learned orthodox doctor, and the inevitable revolt of half of Chris- 
tendom have been postponed for a century. 



It is not my province to follow in detail the vicissitudes of the 
Reformation, but only to indicate briefly its relations with sacerdotal 
asceticism. Luther, at first, like Wickliffe and Huss, paid no atten- 
tion to the subject. In fact, when, on the 31st of October, 1217, 
he nailed on the church door of Wittenberg his celebrated ninety- 
five propositions, nothing was further from his expectations than to 
create a heresy, a schism, or even a general reform in the church. 
He had simply in view to vindicate his ideas on the subject of justi- 
fication, derived from St. Augustin, against the Thomist doctrines 
which had been exaggerated into the monstrous abuses of Tetzel and 
his fellows. 2 In the general movement of the human mind at that 
period so much had been said that was inimical to the received 
practices of the church, without calling forth the thunders of Rome, 
that men seemed to think the day of toleration had at last come. 



1 Bymer, Fcedera XIII. 586-7. 

2 Even in this, Luther was by no 
means the first. Erasmus had exposed 
the wickedness of the system with fully 
as much fervor in the "Encomium 
Morise." — "Hie mihi puta negotiator 
aliquis, aut miles, aut judex, abjecto ex 
tot rapinis unico nummulo, universam 
vitae Lernam semel expurgatam putat, 



totque perjuria, tot libidines, tot eb^ 
rietates, tot rixas, tot cssdes, tot im- 
posturas, tot perfidias, tot proditiones 
existimat velut ex pacto redimi, et ita 
redimi ut jam liceat ad novum scelerum 
orbem de integro reverti." — And in the 
"Epistolae Obscurorum Vivorum " the 
falseness of its promises was unflinch- 
ingly asserted. 



27 



418 



THE EEFOEMATION IN GERMANY. 



The hierarchy sat serenely upon their thrones and in the confidence 
of unassailable power appeared willing to allow any freedom of 
speculation which did not assail their temporal privileges. Yet amid 
the general agitation and opposition to Rome which pervaded society, 
it was impossible for a bold and self-reliant spirit such as Luther's 
not to advance step by step in a career of which the ultimate goal 
was as little foreseen by himself as by others. Still his progress was 
wonderfully slow. Even in 1519 he still considered himself within 
the pale of the church, and held that no wrong committed by her 
could justify a separation or excuse any resistance to the commands 
of a pope ; * and in the same year, in a sermon on matrimony, he 
alluded not unfavorably to the life of virginity. 2 Events soon after 
forced him to further and more dangerous innovations, yet when 
LeoX., in June, 1520, issued his celebrated bull, "Exsurge Domine" 
to crush the rising heresy, in the forty-one errors enumerated as 
taught by Luther, there is no allusion to any doctrine specially 
inimical to ascetic celibacy. 3 

This condemnation, followed as it was by the public burning of 
his writings, aroused Luther to a more active and aggressive hostility 
than he had previously manifested, In his book " De Captivitate 
Babylonica Ecclesise" he attacked the sacrament of ordination, 
denied that it separated the priest from his fellows, and ridiculed the 
rule concerning digami, which excluded from the priesthood a 
man who had been the husband of any but a virgin, while another 
who had polluted himself with six hundred concubines was eligible to 
the episcopate or papacy. 4 Finally on Dec. 10th, 1520, he pro- 
claimed war to the knife by burning at Wittenberg the books of the 
canon law and justifying this act by a manifesto recapitulating the 
damnable doctrines contained in them. Among these he enumerates 
the prohibition of sacerdotal marriage, as the origin and cause of 
excessive vice and scandal. 5 As he said himself, hitherto he had 
only been playing at controversy with the Pope, but this was the 
beginning of the tragedy. 6 Soon after this, in a controversy with 
Ambrogio Catarino, he stigmatized the rule of celibacy as angelical in 



1 Ranke, Beformation in Germany, 
B. II. chap. 3. 

2 Lutheri Opp. T. I. fol. 335a (Jenssi 
1564). 

3 Mag. Bull. Roman. Ed. 1692, I. 
614. 



4 De Captiv. Babylon. Eccles. (Lu- 
theri Opp. Jense, 1581, II. fol. 283a). 

5 Artie, et Errores Libb. Jur. Canon. 
No. 18 (Lutheri Opp. Jense, 1581, II. 
fol. 318a). 

6 Ibid. fol. 3196. 



SACERDOTAL MARRIAGE COMMENCED. 419 

appearance, but devilish in reality, and invented by Satan as a fertile 
source of sin and perdition. 1 

In the mighty movement which was agitating men's minds, Luther 

had been anticipated in this. As early as 1518, a monk of Dantzic 

named James Knade, abandoned his order, married, and publicly 

preached resistance to Rome. It is evident that in this he had the 

support of the people, for though he was imprisoned and tried by the 

ecclesiastical authorities, the only punishment inflicted on him was 

banishment. 2 In the multitude of other questions more interesting 

to the immediate disputants this point of discipline seems to have 

attracted but little attention until 1521, when during Luther's 

enforced seclusion in Wartburg, Bartholomew Bernhardi, pastor of 

Kammerich, near Wittenberg, put the heresiarch's views into action 

in the most practical way by obtaining the consent of his parish and 

celebrating his nuptials with all due solemnity. Albert, Archbishop 

of Mainz and Magdeburg, addressed to Frederic, Elector of Saxony, 

a demand for the rendition of the culprit, which that prudent patron 

of the Reformation skilfully eluded, and Bernhardi published a short 

defence or apology in which he denounced the rule of celibacy as a 

"frivolam traditiunculam." He argued the matter, quoting the texts 

which since his time have been generally employed in support of 

sacerdotal marriage; he referred to Peter and Philip, Spiridon of 

Cyprus, and Hilary of Poitiers, as examples of married bishops, 

quoted the story of Paphnutius, and relied on the authority of the 

Greek church. This apparently did not satisfy the archbishop, for 

Bernhardi felt obliged to address a second apology to Frederic of 

Saxony, to whom he appealed for protection against the displeasure 

of his ecclesiastical superiors. 3 In spite of molestation, he continued 

in the exercise of his priestly functions until death. Less fortunate 

were his immediate imitators. A priest of Mansfeld who took to 

himself a wife was thrown into prison at Halle by the Archbishop of 

Mainz, and Jacob Siedeler, pastor of Glashiitten, in Misnia, who 

was guilty of the same crime, perished miserably in the dungeon of 

Stolpen, to which he was committed by Duke George of Saxony. 4 

The enthusiastic Carlostadt, relieved for the time from the restraint 
of Luther's cooler wisdom, threw himself with zeal into this new 



1 Ibid. fol. 362a, 374a. 2 Krasinski, op. cit. I. 112-3. 

3 Lutheri Opp. Jense, 1581, T. II. fol. 438, 440. 
* Spalatin. Annal. aim. 1521. 



420 THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 

movement of reform, and lost no time in justifying it by a treatise in 
which he argued strenuously in favor of priestly marriage, and ener- 
getically denounced the monastic vows as idle and vain. Luther, 
however, in his retreat, seems not yet prepared to take any very 
decided position. In a letter of Jan. 17th, 1522, to Wolfgang 
Fabricius Capito, one of the officials of the Archbishop of Mainz, he 
takes the latter severely to task with respect to his action in a case 
of the kind — probably that of the priest of Mansfeld alluded to 
above. The man had been set at liberty, but forced to separate him- 
self from his wife, and Capito had defended himself on the ground 
that the woman was a harlot. Luther asks him why he had been so 
earnest with a single strumpet, when he had taken no action with so 
many under his jurisdiction in Halberstadt, Mainz, and Magdeburg, 
and adds that when the priest had acknowledged the woman as his 
wife there should have been nothing further done. He proceeds to 
•say, however, that he does not ask for the freedom of sacerdotal 
marriage, and that he is not prepared to take any general position 
concerning it, except that it is lawful under God. 1 Either with or 
without his approbation, however, his friends lost no time in enforc- 
ing the new dogma which they proclaimed to the world in the most 
authoritative manner. During the same year Luther's own Augus- 
tinian order held a provincial synod at Wittenberg, in which they 
formally threw open the doors of the monasteries, and permitted all 
who desired it to return to the world, declaring that in Christ there 
was no distinction between Jew and Greek, monk and layman, and 
that a vow in opposition to the gospel was no vow, but an impiety. 
Ceremonies, observances, and dress were pronounced futile; those 
who chose to abide by the established rule were free to do so, but 
their preferences were not to be a law to their fellows. Those who 
were fitted for preaching the word were advised to depart ; those who 
remained were obliged to perform the manual labor which had been 
so prominent a portion of primaeval Teutonic monasticism, and 
mendicancy was strictly forbidden. In a few short and simple 
canons a radical rebellion thus declared itself in the heart of an 
ancient and powerful order, and principles were promulgated which 
were totally at variance with sacerdotalism in all its protean forms. 3 



1 Lutheri Epistt. Jenee, 1545, T. II. fol. 38, 39. 

2 Synod. Vuitemberg. (Lutheri Opp. II. 470). 



INCREASE OF SACERDOTAL MARRIAGE. 



421 



This broad spirit of toleration did not suit the views of the more 
progressive reformers. In Luther's own Augustinian convent at 
Wittenberg, one of his most zealous adherents, Gabriel Zwilling, 
preached against monachism in general, taking the ground that sal- 
vation required the renunciation of their vows bj all who had been 
ensnared into assuming the cowl ; and so great was his success that 
thirteen monks at once abandoned the convent. Yet even on Lu- 
ther's return to Wittenberg, he at first took no part in the movement. 
lie retained his Augustinian habit, and continued his residence in 
the convent; but before the close of the year (1522) he put forth 
his work, "De Votis Monasticis," in which he fully and finally 
adopted the views of his friends, and showed himself as an uncom- 
promising enemy of monasticism. 1 How difficult it was for him, 
however, to shake off the habitudes in which he had been trained is 
shown by the fact that, even at the end of 1523, he still sometimes 
preached in his cowl and sometimes without it. 2 

Notwithstanding the zealous opposition of the orthodox ecclesi- 
astical authorities, the doctrine and practice of Wittenberg were not 
long in finding earnest defenders and imitators. But few such mar- 
riages, it is true, are recorded in 1522, although Balthazar Starmius, 
an Augustinian monk of Saxony, committed the bolder indiscretion 
of marrying a widow of Franconia. In that year, however, we find 
Franz von Sickingen, knight-errant and condottiero, who was then 
a power in the state, advocating the emancipation and marriage of 
the religious orders, in a letter to his father-in-law, Diedrieh von 
Henthschuchsheym. Still more important was the movement in- 
augurated in Switzerland by Ulrich Zwingli, who, with ten other 
monks of Notre-Dame-des-Hermites, on the 2d of July, 1522, 
addressed to Hugo von Hohenlandemberg, Bishop of Constance, a 
petition requesting the privilege of marriage. The petitioners boldly 
argued the matter, citing the usual Scriptural authorities, and adjured 
the bishop in the most pressing terms to grant their request. They 
warned him that a refusal might entail ruinous disorders on the whole 
sagserdotal body, and that, unless he seized the opportunity to guide 
the movement, it might speedily assume a most disastrous shape. 



1 Lutheri Opp. II. 477 sqq.— In this 
edition the tract is dated 1522 in the 
index and 1521 in the text. Henke and 
Ranke, however, agree in assigning it 
to a period subsequent to his return from 
"Wartburg. 



2 Spalatin. Annal. ann. 1528.— The 
fact that Spalatin recorded whether he 
wore the cowl or not, shows the impor- 
tance which Luther's friends attached 
to his example with respect to it. 



422 



THE KEFORMATION IN GERMANY. 



They asserted, indeed, that not only in Switzerland, but elsewhere, 
it was generally believed that a majority of ecclesiastics had already 
chosen their future wives, and that a return to the old order of things 
was beyond the power of man to accomplish. 1 

In this assertion, Zwingli and his companions followed perhaps 
rather the dictates of their hopes than of their judgment, for the 
revolution was by no means as universal or immediate as their threats 
or warnings would indicate. Its progress, nevertheless, was rapid 
and decided. Luther, whom we have seen, in the earlier part of 
1522, still giving but a qualified assent to the daring innovation of 
his followers, in February, 1523, wrote to Spalatin in favor of a 
married pastor who was seeking preferment at the hands of the 
Elector Frederic; 2 and in April, 1523, he himself officiated and 
preached a sermon in favor of matrimony to a multitude of distin- 
guished friends at the wedding of Wenceslas Link, vicar of the 
Augustinian order, one of his oldest and most valued supporters, 
who had stood unflinchingly by him when arraigned by Cardinal 
Caietano before the Emperor Maximilian at the Diet of Augsburg. 3 
Not less important was the countenance given to the innovation, two 
days later, by the Elector Frederic, who consented to act as sponsor 
at the baptism of the first-born of Franz Gunther, pastor of Loch ; 4 
the ceremony being performed by the honest chronicler Spalatin 
himself. 

It is curious to see in Spalatin 's diary how each successive mar- 
riage is recorded as a matter of the utmost interest, the hopes of the 
reformers being strengthened by every accession to the ranks of those 
who dared to defy the rules which had been deemed irreversible for 
centuries. Nor was it an act without danger, for no open rupture 
had as yet taken place between the temporal power of any state and 



1 Spalatin. Annal. ann. 1522. 

2 Supplement. Epistt. M. Lutheri 
No. 31 (Hate, 1703). 

3 Spalatin. Annal. ann. 1523. — 
Thammii Chron. Colditens. — Link mar- 
ried a daughter of Suicer, a lawyer of 
Oldenburg in Misnia, and the bride's 
example was shortly afterwards followed 
by her two sisters, one of whom was 
united to Wolfgang Fuess, parish priest 
of Kolditz, and formerly a monk of 
Gera; while the other accepted the 
addresses of the parish priest of Kitsch- 
eren. (Spalatin, ubi sup.) 



4 Spalatin, ubi sup. — How these in- 
novations were regarded in Home is 
manifested in a minatory epistle ad- 
dressed, in 1522, by Adrian II. to the 
Elector Frederic of Saxony. " Et cum 
ipse sit apostata ac professionis suse 
desertor, ut plurimos sui faciat similes, 
sancta ilia Deo vasa polluere non veretur, 
consecratasque virgines et vitam monas- 
ticam professas extrahere a monasteriis 
suis, et mundo imo diabolo, quern semel 
abjuraverunt, reddere . . . Christi 
sacerdotes etiam vilissimis copulat 
meretricibus etc." (Hartzheim VI. 
192.) 



EFFORTS AT REPRESSION. 



423 



the central authority at Rome. Even in Electoral Saxony, though 
Duke Frederic, by a cautious course of passive resistance, afforded 
protection to the heretics, yet he still considered himself a Catholic, 
and the ritual of his chapel was unaltered. Elsewhere the ecclesi- 
astical power was bent on asserting its supremacy over the licentious 
apostates who ventured to sully their vows and prostitute the sacra- 
ment of marriage by their incestuous unions. The old charge of 
promiscuous intercourse was resorted to in their case, as it has been 
with almost every heresy in every age, for the purpose of exciting 
popular odium, 1 and wherever the discipline of the church could be 
enforced, it was done unsparingly. The temper of these endeavors 
to repress the movement is well illustrated by the regulations pro- 
mulgated under the authority of the Cardinal-legate Campeggi, 
when, in 1524, he succeeded in uniting a number of reactionary 
princes at the Assembly of Ratisbon. Deploring the sacrilege com- 
mitted in the marriages of priests and monks, which were becoming 
extremely common, he granted permission to the secular powers to 
seize all such apostates and deliver them to the ecclesiastical officials, 
significantly restraining them, however, from inflicting torture. The 
officials were empowered to condemn the offenders to perpetual im- 
prisonment, or to hand them over to the secular arm — a decent 
euphuism for a frightful death ; and any negligence on the part of 
the ordinaries exposed those officers to the pains and penalties of 
heresy. 2 

In spite of all this, however, the votaries of marriage had the 
support and sympathy of the great body of the people. It shows 
how widely diffused and strongly implanted was the conviction of 
the evils of celibacy, when those who four centuries earlier had so 
cruelly persecuted their pastors for not discarding their wives now 
urged them to marriage, and were ready to protect them from the 
consequences of the act. Thus, during the summer of 1524, Wolf- 
gang Eabricius Capito, provost of St. Thomas and priest of the 
church of St. Peter at Strassburg, whom we have seen two years 
earlier prosecuting a married priest, took to himself a wife, by the 
request of his parishioners, and when the chapter of canons endeav- 
ored to interfere with him, the threatening aspect of the populace 



1 See the address of Frederic Nausea, 
surnamed Blancicampianus, afterwards 
Bishop of Vienna, at the Council of 



Mainz in 1527- — Synod. Mogunt. ann. 
1527 (Hartzheim VI. 207). 

2 Reformat. Cleri German, ann. 1524 
c. 26 (Goldast. Constit. Imp. III. 491J. 



424 



THE REFORMATION" IN GERMANY. 



warned them to desist. Nor was this the only case, for Bishop Wil- 
liam undertook to excommunicate all the married priests of Strass- 
burg, when the senate of the city resolutely espoused their cause, 
and even the authority of the legate Campeggi could not reconcile 
the quarrel. 1 

Even higher protection was sometimes not wanting. When Adrian 
II., in 1522, reproached the Diet of Nurnberg with the inobservance 
of the decree of Worms and the consequent growth of Lutheranism, 
and King Ferdinand, in the name of the German states, replied that 
a council for the reformation of the church was the only remedy, the 
question of married priests arose for discussion. The German princes 
alleged that they could find in the civil and municipal laws no pro- 
visions for the punishment of such transgressions, and that the canons 
of discipline could only be enforced by the ecclesiastical authorities 
themselves, who ought not to be interfered with in the discharge of 
their duty by the secular authorities. 2 This was scant encourage- 
ment, but even this was often denied in practice. When, in 1523, 
Conrad von Tungen, Bishop of Wurzburg, threw into prison two of 
his canons, the doctors John Apel and Frederic Fischer, for the crime 
of marrying nuns, the Council of Regency at Niirnberg forced him 
to liberate them in a few weeks. 3 This latter fact is the more re- 
markable, since, but a short time previous (March 6th, 1523), the 
Imperial Diet at Niirnberg, under the auspices of the same Regency, 
had expressed its desire to give every assistance to the ecclesiastical 
authority in enforcing the canons. In a decree on the subject of the 
religious disturbances, it adopted the canon law on celibacy as part 
of the civil law, pronouncing sentence of imprisonment and confis- 
cation on all members of the clergy who should marry, and ordering 
the civil power in all cases to assist the ecclesiastical in its efforts to 
punish offenders. 4 



Spalatin. Annal. ann. 1524. 



s. S. R. I. Ordinum NTo- 
rimb. cap. 18 (Goldast. op. cit. I. 455). 
— With this the Legate Cheregato pro- 
fessed himself to be content, but he 
bitterly complained of an intimation 
that if these apostate priests and nuns 
transgressed the laws in any other way, 
the secular tribunals would punish 
them. He held that, though apostates, 
they were still ecclesiastics, only amen- 
able to the courts Christian, and he 



protested against any violation of the 
privileges and jurisdiction of the church 
such as would be committed in bring- 
ing them before a civil magistrate. 
(Ibid. p. 456.) 

3 Spalatin. ann. 1523. 

4 Edict. Norimb. Convent, ann. 1523 
c. 10, 18, 19 (Goldast. II. 151).— This 
illustrates well the vacillating conduct 
of the Council of Kegency during this 
period. 



EMANCIPATION OF NUNS. 



425 



The emancipation of nuns excited considerable public interest, and 
in many instances was effected by aid from without. A certain Leon- 
hard Kopp, who was a determined enemy of monachism, rendered 
himself somewhat notorious by exploits of the kind. One of the 
earliest instances was that by which, on Easter eve, 1523, at con- 
siderable risk, he succeeded in carrying off from the convent of 
Nimptschen, in Misnia, eight young virgins of noble birth, all of 
whom were subsequently married, and one of whom was Catharine 
von Bora. 1 The example was contagious. Before the month was 
out six nuns, all of noble blood, left the abbey of Sormitz, and soon 
after eight escaped from that of Peutwitz, at Weissenfels. 2 Monks 
enfranchised themselves with still less trouble. At Niirnberg, in 
1524, the Augustinians in a body threw off their cowls and pro- 
claimed themselves citizens. 3 

Finally, Luther gave the last and most unquestionable proof of his 
adhesion to the practice of sacerdotal marriage by espousing Cath- 
arine von Bora, whom we have seen escaping, two years before, from 
the convent of Nimptschen. Scandal, it would seem, had been busy 
with the intimacy between the pious doctor and the fair renegade, 
who had spent nearly the whole period of her liberty at Wittenberg, 
and Luther, with the practical decision of character which distin- 
guished him, suddenly resolved to put the most effectual stop to 
rumors which his enemies doubtless were delighted to circulate. 
On the evening of June 13th, 1525, without consulting his friends, 
he invited to supper Pomeranius, Lucas Cranach, and Apellus, and 
had the marriage ceremony performed. 4 It took his followers com- 
pletely by surprise; many of them disapproved of it, and Justus 
Jonas, in communicating the fact to Spalatin, characterizes it as a 
startling event, and evidently feels that his correspondent will require 
the most incontrovertible evidence of the fact, when he declares that 
he himself had been present and had seen the bridegroom in the 
marriage bed. 5 If the portraits after Lucas Cranach given in Mayer's 



1 Chron. Torgavise — Spalatin. Annal. 
ann. 1523. He conveyed them at once 
to "Wittenberg, and Luther writes to 
Spalatin asking him to collect funds for 
their support until they can be per- 
manently provided for. 

3 Spalatin. ubi sup. 

3 Spalatin. ann. 1524. 

4 Melanchthon to Camerarius (ap. 
Mayeri Dissert, de Cath. Lutheri con- 



juge. pp. 25-6). — Melanchthon can 
only suggest that it was a mysterious 
act of Providence. — "Isto enim sub 
negotio fortassi aliquid occulti et quid- 
dam divinius subest, de quo nos curiose 
quaerere non decet." — The whole letter 
is singularly apologetic in its tone. 

5 Spalatin. ann. 1525. 

Pomeranius, a priest of Wittenberg, 
in writing to Spalatin, gives as the 
reason of Luther's marriage — " Maligna 



426 



THE KEFORMATION IK GERMANY. 



Dissertation on Catharine be faithful likenesses, it was scarcely the 
beauty of his bride that led Luther to take this step, for her features 
seem rather African than European. 1 

When Luther had once decided for himself on the propriety of 
sacerdotal marriage, he was not likely to stop half-way. Some of 
the reformers were disposed to adopt the principles of the early 
church, and, while permitting married priests to officiate, denied to 
them the right to marry a second time or to espouse any but virgins, 
declaring all digami worthy of death and calling upon the people to 
drive them out. Against these Luther, in 1528, took up the cudgels 
vigorously, arguing the question in all its bearings and arriving at 
the conclusion that only bigamists were to be shunned or deemed 



fama effecit ut Doct. Martinus insperato 
fieret conjunx ; " and Luther, in a letter 
to the same, admits this even more dis- 
tinctly — "Os obstruxi infamantibus me 
cum Catherina Borana." That his 
action was not generally approved by 
his friends is apparent from his asking 
Michael Stiefel to pray that his new 
life may sanctify him — " Nam vehe- 
menter irritantur sapientes, etiam inter 
nostros." — Spalatin. ubi sup. 

That surprise should have been 
aroused is singular, when he had already 
proclaimed the most extreme views in 
favor of matrimony. As early as 1522 
he delivered his famous "Sermo de 
Matrimonio," in which he enjoins it in 
the strictest manner as a duty incumbent 
upon all. Thus, in considering the im- 
pediments to marriage, he treats of 
vows, concerning which he says : "Sin 
votum admissum est, videndum tibi 
est, ut supra memoravi, num tribus 
eviratorum generibus comprehendaris, 
quae conjugio ademit Deus, ubi te in 
aliquo istorumuno non repereris, votum 
rescindas, monasticen deseras oportet; 
moxque ad naturalem sociam adjungas 
te matrimonii lege." — P. I. c. 8 (Opp. 
Ed. Vuitemberg. V. 121). To this 
must be added his decided opinions on 
the subject of conjugal rights, as devel- 
oped in the well-known passage which 
has excited so much animadversion, and 
which, if we are to interpret it literally, 
conveys a doctrine which sounds so 
strangely as the precept of a teacher of 
morality. In treating of the causes of 
divorce, he remarks: " Tertia ratio est, 
ubi alter alteri sese subduxerit, ut debi- 
tam benevolentiam persolvere nolit, aut 
habitare cum renuerit. Reperiuntur 



enim interdum adeo pertinaces uxores, 
qui etiam si decies in libidinem pro- 
labentur mariti pro sua duritia non 
curarent. Hie oportunum est ut ma- 
ritus dicat'Si tu nolueris, alia volet.' 
Si domina nolit, adveniat ancilla, ita 
tamen ut antea iterum et tertio uxorem 
admoneat maritus, et coram aliis ejus 
etiam pertinaciam detegat, ut publice 
et ante conspectum ecclesise, duritia 
ejus et agnoscatur et reprehendatur. 
Si turn renuat, repudia earn, et in vicem 
Vasti, Ester surroga, Assueri regis ex- 
emplo" c (Ibid. p. 123). 

One conclusion, at least, can safely 
be drawn from this, that the morality 
of the age had impressed Luther with 
the belief that the self-restraint of 
chastity was impossible. 

That the Catholics should make them- 
selves merry over the marriage of the 
apostate monk and nun was to be ex- 
pected, and Jerome Emser did not 
think it beneath him to write an epi- 
thalamium on the wedding of his 
former friend, of which the following 
may be taken as a specimen — 

Ad Priapum Lampsacenum 
Veneramur, et Silenum 
Bacchumque cum Venere 
cum jubilo. 

Septa claustri dissipamus, 
Sacra vasa compilamus 
Sumptus unde suppetat 
cum jubilo. 

Mayeri Dissert, p. 22, 23. 

1 Mayeri de Cath. Luth. conjug* 
Dissert. 4to. Hamburgi, 1702. Cranach, 
as we have seen, was one of the three 
witnesses present at the marriage. 






INFLUENCES ADVEKSE TO CELIBACY. 427 

unworthy of holy orders. 1 Yet at the same time his thoroughly 
practical mind prevented him from losing sight of some of the evils 
inseparable from the revolution which he had wrought in an institu- 
tion so deeply affecting daily life as monasticism. As late as 1543, 
in a letter to Spalatin, while congratulating him on the desire ex- 
pressed by some nuns to leave their convent, he cautions them not 
to do so unless they have a certainty or, at least, a speedy prospect 
of marriage. He complains of the number of such cases in which 
he had been obliged to support the fugitives, and he concludes by 
declaring that old women who had no chance of finding husbands 
had much better remain in their cloisters. 2 

It is not difficult to explain why there was so ready and general 
an acquiescence in the abrogation of a rule established by the ven- 
eration of so many centuries. Not only had the doctrines of the 
reformers taken a deep and firm hold of the popular heart through- 
out Germany, destroying the reverence for tradition and antiquity, 
and releasing the human mind from the crushing obligation of blind 
obedience, but there were other motives, natural, if not particularly 
creditable. The ecclesiastical foundations had long neglected the 
duties of charity, hospitality, and education, on which were grounded 
their claims to their broad lands and rich revenues. While, there- 
fore, the temporal princes might be delighted with the opportunity 
of secularizing and seizing the church possessions, the people might 
reasonably hope that the increase of their rulers' wealth would alle- 
viate their own burdens, as well as release them from the direct 
oppression which many of them suffered from the religious establish- 
ments. Even more potential was the disgust everywhere felt for the 
flagrant immorality of the priesthood. The dread experienced by 
every husband and father lest wife and daughter might at any mo- 
ment fall victims to the lust of those who had every opportunity for 
the gratification of unholy passions, led them to welcome the change, 
in the hope that it would result in restoring decency and virtue to a 
class which had long seemed to regard its sacred character as the 
shield and instrument of crime. 

The moral character of the clergy, indeed, had not improved 
during the busy and eventful years which marked the first quarter 
of the sixteenth century. There is a curious little tract, printed in 
Cologne in 1505, with the approbation of the faculty, which is di- 

1 Lutheri Opp. (Jenee, 1564, T. I. fol. 496-500). 

2 Supplement Epistt. M. Lutheri No. 212 (Halse, 1703). 



428 



THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 



rected against concubinage in general, but particularly against that 
of the priests. Its laborious accumulation of authorities to prove 
that licentiousness is a sin is abundant evidence of the existing 
demoralization, while the practices which it combats, of guilty eccle- 
siastics granting absolution to each other and mutually dispensing 
themselves from confession, show how easily the safeguards with 
which the church had sought to surround her ministers were eluded. 1 
The degradation of the priesthood, indeed, can readily be measured 
when, in the little town of Hof, in the Vogtland, three priests could 
be found defiling the sacredness of Ash- Wednesday by fiercely fight- 
ing over a courtesan in a house of ill-fame; 2 or when Leo X., in a 
feeble effort at reform, was obliged to argue that systematic licen- 
tiousness was not rendered excusable because its prevalence amounted 
to a custom, or because it was openly tolerated by those whose duty 
was to repress it. 3 In fact, a clause in the Concordat with Francis I. 
in 1516, renewing and enhancing the former punishments for public 
concubinage, would almost justify the presumption that the principal 
result of the rule of celibacy was to afford to the officials a regular 
revenue derived from the sale of licenses to sin 4 — the old abuse, 
which rises before us in every age from the time of Damiani and 
Hildebrand, and which, since John XXII. had framed the tariff of 
absolutions for crime known as the " Taxes of the Penitentiary," 
had the authority of the papacy itself to justify it. In this curious 
document we find that a concubinary priest could procure absolution 
for less than a ducat " in spite of all provincial and synodal consti- 
tutions ;" while half a ducat was sufficient to absolve for incest com- 
mitted with a mother or a sister. 5 

That no concealment was thought necessary, and that sensual 
indulgence was not deemed derogatory in any way to the character 



1 Avisamentum de Concubinariis non 
absolvendis, 4to. 1505. — The author 
devotes a long argument to prove that 
incontinence in a priest is worse than 
homicide. His conclusion is " Omnis 
sacerdos fornicando est sacrilegus et 
perjurus; et gravius totiens quotiens 
peccat quam si hominem occidat." 

2 "Wideman. Chron. Curiae ann. 1505. 

3 Neque superiorum tolerantia, seu 
prava consuetudo, quae potius cor- 
ruptela dicenda est, a multitudine 
peccantium, aliave quaelibet excusatio 
eis aliquo modo suffragetur. — Concil. 
Lateran. V. ann. 1514 Sess. IX. 



4 Quia vero in quibusdam regioni- 
bus nonnulli jurisdictionem ecclesias- 
ticam habentes, pecuniarios quaestus 
a concubinariis percipere non erubes- 
cunt, patientes eos in tali foeditate sor- 
descere. — Concil. Lateran. V. ann. 
1516 Sess. xi.— Cf. Cornel. Agripp. 
De Vanitate Scient. c. lxiv. — Agrippa 
even states that it was a common thing 
for bishops to sell to women whose hus- 
bands were absent the right to commit 
adultery without sin. 

5 Taxae Sacrae Pcenitentiariee, Fried- 
rich's Ed. p. 38; Gibbings's, p. 3; 
Saint-Andre's, p. 8. 



DEMOKALIZATION OF THE PEIESTHOOD. 



429 



of a Christian prelate, may be reasonably deduced from the pane- 
gyric of Gerard of Nimeguen on Philip of Burgundy, ' granduncle 
of Charles V., a learned and accomplished man, who filled the im- 
portant see of Utrecht from 1517 to 1524. Gerard alludes to the 
amorous propensities and promiscuous intrigues of his patron with- 
out reserve, and as his book was dedicated to the Archduchess Mar- 
garet, sister of Charles V., it is evident that he did not feel his 
remarks to be defamatory. The good prelate, too, no doubt repre- 
sented the convictions of a large portion of his class, when he was 
wont to smile at those who urged the propriety of celibacy, and to 
declare his belief in the impossibility of chastity among men who, 
like the clergy, were pampered with high living and tempted by 
indolence. Those who professed to keep their vows inviolate he 
denounced as hypocrites of the worst description, and he deemed 
them far worse than their brethren who sought to avoid unnecessary 
scandal by decently keeping their concubines at home. 1 

Even this reticence, however, was considered unnecessary by a 
large portion of the clergy. In 1512, the Bishop of Ratisbon issued 
a series of canons in which, after quoting the Basilian regulations, 
he adds that many of his ecclesiastics maintain their concubines so 
openly that it would appear as though they saw neither sin nor 
scandal in such conduct, and that their evil example was the efficient 
cause of corrupting the faithful. 2 In Switzerland the same abuses 
were quite as prevalent, if we may believe a memorial presented, in 
1533, by the citizens of Lausanne, complaining of the conduct of 
their clergy. They rebuked the incontinence of the priests, whose 
numerous children were accustomed to earn a living by beggary in 
the streets, but the canons were the subjects of their especial objur- 
gation. The dean of the chapter had defied an excommunication 
launched at him for buying a house near the church in which to 
keep his mistress ; others of the canons had taken to themselves the 
wives of citizens and refused to give them up ; but the quaintest 
grievance of which they had been guilty was the injury which their 
competition inflicted on the public brothel of the town. 3 What was 



1 Gerardi Noviomagi Philippus Bur- 
gundus (Mathaei Analect. I. 230). 

2 Statut. Synod. Joan. Episc. Katis- 
pon. ann. 1512 (Hartzheim VI. 86). 

3 Art. 18e "Item. Mais, Nous nous 
plaignions d'aucuns chanoines qui nous 
gatent notre bordeau de la ville, car il 
y en a qui le tiennent en leurs maisons, 
privement, pour tous venans." — Quoted 



from a contemporary MS. by Abraham 
Euchat in his ' ' Histoire de la Keforma- 
tion de la Suisse," T. I. p. xxxiii.-v. 
(Geneve, 1727). According to Corne- 
lius Agrippa, the Eoman prelates de- 
rived a regular revenue from this 
source, the right to keep definite num- 
bers of strumpets in the public brothels 
being partitioned out between them. — 
De Vanitate Scient. c. lxiv. 



430 



THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY 



the condition of clerical morality in Italy may be gathered from the 
stories of Bishop Bandello, who, as a Dominican and a prelate, may 
fairly be deemed to represent the tone of the thinking and edu- 
cated classes of society. The cynical levity with which he narrates 
scandalous tales about monks and priests shows that in the public 
mind sacerdotal immorality was regarded almost as a matter of 
course. 1 

The powerful influence of all this on the progress of the Reforma- 
tion was freely admitted by the authorities of the church. When 
the legate Campeggi was sent to Germany to check the spread of 
heresy, in his reformatory edict issued at Ratisbon in 1524, he de- 
clared that the efforts of the Lutherans had no little justification in 
the detestable morals and lives of the clergy, and this is confirmed 
by his unsparing denunciation of their licentiousness, drunkenness, 
quarrels, and tavern-haunting; their traffic in absolution for enor- 
mous offences ; their unclerical habits and hideous blasphemy ; their 
indulgence in incantations and dabbling in witchcraft. 2 Very sig- 
nificant is his declaration that the canonical punishments shall be 



1 See, for instance, Novelle, P. in. 
Nov. lvi. 

2 Reformat. Cleri German. (Hartz- 
heim VI. 198). — "Hanc perditissimam 
hasresin . . . non parvam habuisse oc- 
casionem, partim a perditis moribus et 
vita clericorum etc." 

There was no scruple in confessing 
this fact by those who spoke authorita- 
tively for the Catholic church, and it 
long continued to be alleged as the 
cause of the stubbornness of the here- 
tics. Thus the Bishop of Constance, 
in the canons of his Synod of 1567 — 
"Estote etiam memores, damnatam et 
detestandam cleri vitam huic malo in 
quo, proh dolor! versamur, majori ex 
parte ansam praebuisse. . . . Omnes 
sapientes peritique viri unanimi sen- 
tentia hoc asserunt, hocque efnagitant 
penitus, ut prius clerus ecclesiarumque 
ministri ac doctores a vitse sordibus 
repurgentur, quam ulla cum adversariis 
nostris de doctrina concordia expectari 
queat." And then, after describing in 
the strongest terms the vices of the 
clergy and their unwillingness to reform, 
he adds "Quae sane morum turpi tudo, 
vehementer et tantopere imperiti populi 
animos offendit ut subinde magis 
magisque a catholica nostra religione 
alienior efficiatur, atque sacerdotium 
una cum sacerdotibus doctrinam juxta 



atque doctores, execretur, dirisque 
devoveat: ita ut protinus ad quam vis 
sectam deficere potius paratus sit quam 
quod ad ecclesiam redire velit." — Synod. 
Constant, ann. 1567 (Hartzheim VII. 
455). 

Pius V. himself did not hesitate to 
adopt the same view. In an epistle 
addressed to the abbots and priors of 
the diocese of Freysingen, in 1567, he 
says — "Cum nobiscum ipsi cogitamus 
quae res materiam praebuerit tot tan- 
tisque pestiferis haeresibus . . . tanti 
mali causam praecipue fuisse judicamus 
corruptos praelatorum mores, qui . . .. 
eandemque vivendi licentiam iis, quibus 
praeerant permittentes et exemplo eos 
suo corrumpentes, maximum apud. laicos 
odium contemptionem et invidiam non 
immerito contraxerunt" (Hartzheim 
VII. 586). 

Alfonso de Castro in 1556 declares 
that the priesthood was one of the effi- 
cient causes of the spread of heresy. 
It would be difficult for orthodoxy to 
maintain itself without the direct in- 
terposition of God, in view of the scan- 
dalous lives, and general worthlessness 
of all orders of ecclesiastics, whose exces- 
sive numbers, ignorance, and turpitude 
exposed them to contempt. — Alph. de 
Castro de Just. Punit. Haares. Lib. 
in. c. 5. 



DEMOKALIZATION OF THE PKIESTHOOD. 



431 



inflicted on concubinary priests, in spite of all custom to the contrary 
or all connivance with the prelates. 1 

How little, indeed, licentious ecclesiastics might reasonably dread 
the canonical punishments is illustrated in the report, by the cele- 
brated jurisconsult Grillandus, of a case which came before him while 
he was auditor of the Papal Vicar in Rome. A Spanish priest and 
Doctor of Canon Law, residing in the Christian capital, became 
enamoured of several young nuns at once, and endeavored to seduce 
them by teaching them that, as they and he were alike spouses of 
Christ, carnal affection between them was their duty. Failing in 
this, he sought to compel the assistance of God in his designs, and, 
being a man of literary culture, he composed a number of prayers 
of singular obscenity, and bribed various ignorant priests to recite 
them amid the ineffable mysteries of the Mass, hoping thus to obtain 
the aid of heaven in overcoming the chastity of his intended victims. 
At length he chanced to offer one of these prayers to a priest of 
somewhat better character, who was sufficiently shocked by it to 
communicate with the authorities. Brought before Grillandus, the 
guilty Spaniard sought to justify himself by alleging various Scrip- 
tural texts, but, upon being warned that such a defence would subject 
him to a prosecution for heresy, he recanted and acknowledged his 
errors. For this complicated mingling of lust and sacrilege, his 
only punishment was a short banishment from Rome. 2 When the 
papal court set such an example, what was to be expected of less 
enlightened regions ? 

How keenly these evils were felt by the people, and how instinct- 
ively they were referred to the rule of celibacy as to their proper 
origin, is shown by an incidental allusion in the formula of complaint 
laid before the pope by the imperial Diet held at Niirnberg early in 
1522, before the heresy of priestly marriage had spread beyond the 



1 Reformat. Cleri German, cap. xv. 
— So when, in 1521, Conrad, Bishop of 
"Wurzburg, issued a mandate for the 
reformation of his clergy, he described 
them as for the most part abandoned to 
gluttony, drunkenness, gambling, quar- 
relling, and lust. — Mandat. pro. Re- 
format. Cleri. (Gropp, Script. Rer. 
Wirceburg. I. 269). — In 1505 the 
Bishop of Bamberg, in complaining of 
his clergy, shows us how little respect 
was habitually paid to the incessant 
repetition of the canons. — "Condo- 
lenter referimus vitam et honestatem 



clericalem adeo apud quamplures nos- 
trarum civitatis et dioceseos clericos 
esse obumbratam ut vix inter clericos 
et laycos discrimen habeatur : et ipsa 
statuta nostra synodalia in ipsorum 
clericorum cordibus obliterata et a plur- 
ibus non visa aut perlecta vilipendantur : 
nullam propter nostram, quam hactenus 
pii pastoris more tolleravimus patien- 
tiam, capientes emendationem. " — 
(Hartzheim VI. 66.) 

2 Grillandi Tract, de Sortilegiis 
Qusest. xvii. No. 1. 



432 



THE REFOKMATION IN GERMANY, 



vicinity of Wittenberg. The Diet, in recounting the evils arising 
from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction which allowed clerical offenders to 
enjoy virtual immunity, adduced, among other grievances, the license 
afforded to those who, debarred by the canons from marriage, aban- 
doned themselves night and day to attempts upon the virtue of the 
wives and daughters of the laity, sometimes gaining their ends by 
flattery and presents, and sometimes taking advantage of the oppor- 
tunities offered by the confessional. It was not uncommon, indeed, 
for women to be openly carried off by their priests, while their hus- 
bands and fathers were threatened with vengeance if they should 
attempt to recover them. As regards the sale to ecclesiastics of 
licenses to indulge in habitual lust, the Diet declared it to be a reg- 
ular and settled matter, reduced to the form of an annual tax, which 
in most dioceses was exacted of all the clergy without exception, so 
that when those who perchance lived chastely demurred at the pay- 
ment, they were told that the bishop must have the money, and that 
after it was handed over they might take their choice whether to 
keep concubines or not. 1 In the face of this condition of ecclesi- 
astical morality, it required some obtuseness for Adrian VI. to com- 
pare Luther to Mahomet, the one seeking to attract to his party the 
carnal-minded by permitting marriage, even as the other had estab- 
lished polygamy, 2 and, further, to abuse him for uniting the ministers 
of Christ with the vilest harlots. 3 

Among the diverse opinions of existing evils and their remedy, it 
is interesting to see what was the view of the subject taken by those 
ecclesiastics whose purity of life removed them from all temptation 
to indulgence, and who yet were not personally interested in uphold- 
ing the gigantic but decaying structure of sacerdotalism. Of these 
men Erasmus may be taken as the representative. His opinion on 
all the questions of the day was too eagerly desired for him to escape 
the necessity of pronouncing his verdict on the innovation portended 



1 Gravamin. Ordin. Imperii cap. xxi., 
lvii., lxx. (Goldast. I. 464). 

"When such complaints were made by 
the highest authority in the empire, it 
is not difficult to understand the reasons 
which led the senate of Niirnberg — 
which city had not yet embraced the 
Keformation — to deprive, in 1524, the 
Dominicans and Franciscans of the 
superintendence and visitation of the 
nuns of St. Catharine and St. Clare ; 



nor do we need Spalatin's malicious 
suggestion — "cura et visitatione, pene 
dixeram corruptione. " — Spalatin. An- 
nal. ann. 1524. 

2 Adriani PP. YI. Instructio data 
Fr. Cheregato, Nov. 25, 1522 (Le Plat, 
Monument. Concil. Trident. II. 146). 

3 Adriani PP. YI. Breve ad Frid. 
Saxon. (Lutheri Opp. T. II. fol. 5426. 
— Le Plat, II. 134). 



OPINIONS OF ERASMUS. 



433 



by the one or two marriages which took place near Wittenberg in 
1521, and accordingly, in 1522, from his retreat at Bale he issued a 
short dissertation on the subject, which, although addressed merely 
to Bishop Christopher of that city, was evidently intended for a 
European audience. In this essay, after sketching the rise of celi- 
bacy and attributing it to the purity and fervor of the early Chris- 
tians, he proceeds to depict the altered condition of the church. 
Among the innumerable multitude of priests who crowd the monas- 
teries, the chapters, and the parishes, he declares that there are few 
indeed whose lives are pure, even as respects open and avowed con- 
cubinage, without penetrating into the mysteries of secret intrigue. 
As, therefore, there is no Scriptural injunction of celibacy, he con- 
cludes that, however desirable it might be to have ministers free 
from the cares of marriage and devoting themselves solely to the 
service of God, yet, since it seems impossible to conquer the rebel- 
lious flesh, it would be better to allow those who cannot control 
themselves to have wives with whom they could live in virtuous 
peace, bringing up their children in the fear of God, and earning 
the respect of their flocks. No more startling evidence, indeed, of 
the demoralization of the period could be given than the cautious 
fear which Erasmus expresses lest such a change should be opposed 
by the episcopal officials, who would object to the diminution of their 
unhallowed gains levied on the concubines of the clergy. 1 

When such was the condition of ecclesiastical morality, and such 
were the opinions of all except those directly interested in upholding 
the old order of things, it is no wonder if the people were disposed 
to look with favor on the marriage of their pastors, and if the rejec- 



1 Erasmi Lib. xxxi. Epist. 43. 

Notwithstanding the sarcasm, popu- 
larly attributed to Erasmus, on the oc- 
casion of Luther's union with Catharine 
von Bora — that the Keformation had 
turned out to be a comedy, seeing that 
it resulted in a marriage — he continued 
to raise his voice in favor of abolishing 
the rule of celibacy. Thus he writes, 
in October, 1525, u Vehementer laudo 
coelibatum, sed ut nunc habet sacerdo- 
tum ac monachorum vita, prsesertim 
apud G-ermanos, prsestaret indulged 
remedium matrimonii " (Lib. xviii. 
Epist. 9). And again, in 1526, "Ego 
nee sacerdotibus permitto conjugium. 



auctoritate Pontificum, ad sedificationem 
ecclesise non ad destructionem ... In 
primis optandum esset sacerdotes et 
monachos castitatem ac coelestem vitam 
amplecti. Nunc rebus adeo contamin- 
atis, fortasse levius malum erat eligen- 
dum" (Lib. xviii. Epist. 4). 

Yet, in his " Liber de Amabili 
Ecclesise Concordia," written in 1533 
in the hope of reuniting the severed 
church, while awaiting the promised 
general council which was to reconcile 
all things, Erasmus did not hesitate to 
give utterance to the opinion that those 
who fell away in heresy or even schism 
were worse than those who lived im- 
purely in the true faith. 



28 



434 THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 

tion of celibacy gave a fresh impetus to the cause of Lutheranism. 
In the early days of all sects, it is only those of ardent faith and 
pure zeal who are likely to embrace a new belief, with all tjie 
attendant risks of persecution and contumely. The laxity of life 
allowed to the Catholic clergy would attract to its ranks and retain 
those whose aim was sensual indulgence. Thus, necessarily, the 
reformers who married would present for contrast regular and chaste 
lives and well-ordered households, purified by the dread of the ever- 
impending troubles to which the accident of a day might at any time 
expose them. The comparison thus was in every way favorable to 
the new ideas, and they flourished accordingly. 

Nor, perhaps, were the worldly inducements to which I have be- 
fore alluded less powerful in their own way in advancing the cause. 
Shortly before Luther's marriage, whatever influence was derivable 
from an aristocratic example was obtained when the Baron of Hey- 
deck, a knight of the Teutonic order, renounced his vows and pub- 
licly espoused a nun of Ligny. 1 This may possibly have encouraged 
his superior, Albert of Brandenburg, grand-master of the order, to 
execute his remarkably successful coup d'etat in changing his religion 
and seizing the estates of the order, thus practically founding the 
state which chance and talent have exalted until it has been able to 
realize, at least for a time, the day-dream of a united Germany. 
The liberty of marriage which he thus assumed was soon turned to 
account in his advantageous alliance with Frederic, King of Den- 
mark, whose daughter Dorothea he espoused, the Bishop of Szamland 
officiating as his proxy, and the actual marriage being celebrated 
June 14, 1526. 2 

Luther may resonably be held excusable for counselling and aiding 
a transaction which lent such incalculable strength to the struggling 
cause of the Reformation, and it is not to be wondered at if he en- 
deavored to follow it up with another of a similar character. The 
nephew of the Duke of Prussia, also named Albert of Brandenburg, 
occupied the highest place in the Teutonic hierarchy, as Archbishop 
both of Mainz and Magdeburg, in the latter of which powerful sees 
the Lutheran heresies had taken deep root. Luther sought to induce 
the archbishop to follow his uncle's example ; to take possession in 
his own right of the Magdeburg territories, and to transmit them to 
the posterity with which heaven could not fail to bless his prospective 



Spalatin. Annal. aim. 1525. 2 Ibid. ann. 1526. 



EFFOETS AT ACCOMMODATION, 



435 



marriage — a scheme which met the warm approbation of the leading 
nobles of the diocese. Albert thought seriously of the project, es- 
pecially as the Peasants' War then raging was directed particularly 
against the lands of the church, but he finally abandoned it, and his 
flock had to work out their reformation without his assistance. 1 

Perhaps some plans of territorial aggrandizement may have stimu- 
lated the zeal of the Count of Embden, who boasted that he had 
assisted and encouraged the marriage of no less than five hundred 
monks and nuns ; 2 yet the process of secularizing the monastic foun- 
dations was in many places by no means sudden or violent. Thus, 
when the Abbot of Ilgenthal in Saxony died, in 1526, the Elector 
John simply forbade the election of a successor, and placed the 
abbey in charge of a prefect, while the remaining monks were lib- 
erally supplied until they one after another died out, 3 and in 1529, 
when Philip, Count of Waldeck, took possession of the ancrent 
monastery of Hainscheidt, he caused all the monks to be supported 
during life. 4 






Through all this period the hope had never been abandoned of 
such an arrangement as would prevent an irrevocable separation in 
the church. Moderate and temperate men on both sides were ready 
to make such concessions of form as would enable Christendom to 
remain united, as the great vital truths on which all were agreed so 
far outweighed the points of divergence. Whether these hopes were 
well or ill-founded was to be determined at the Diet of Augsburg, 
to which, in June, 1530, both parties were summoned for the pur- 
pose of submitting their differences to the emperor. Charles came 
to Germany in the full flush of his recent extraordinary triumphs, 
the most powerful prince since the days of Charlemagne. Europe 
was at length at peace, even the Turk only looming in the East as a 
probable, not as an existing, enemy. But Charles, newly crowned 
at Bologna, came ostensibly as the steadfast ally of the pope, and 
Clement VII. had not the slightest intention of renouncing the tra- 
ditional and imprescriptible rights of the Holy See. The Catholic 
princes of Germany, too, had their grounds of private quarrel with 



1 Henke Append, ad Calixt. p. 595. 
— Serrarii Kerum Mogunt. Lib. v. 
(Script. Ker. Mogunt. I. 831, 839). As 
Albert, though Primate of Germany , was 
only thirty-five or six years of age, the 
proposition was not an unreasonable one. 



2 Spalatin. Annal. aim. 1526. 

3 Thammii Chron. Coldicens. 

4 Chron. Waldeccense (Hahnii Col- 
lect. Monument. L 851). 



436 



THE REFOEMATION IN GEKMANY. 



their Protestant peers, and, holding an unquestioned majority, were 
not disposed to abandon their position. The Protestant princes, on 
the other hand, were firm in their new-found faith, and, however 
disposed to avert the threatened storm by the sacrifice of non-essen- 
tials, their convictions were too strong for them to retrace the steps 
which they had taken during so many long and weary years. It is 
evident that, with such materials on either side, no reunion was prob- 
able ; and, even had an accommodation on points of doctrine been 
possible, there was one subject which scarcely seemed to admit of 
satisfactory compromise. In the states of the reform, the downfall of 
monachism had placed in the hands of the temporal powers large 
bodies of sequestrated abbey lands. To the Catholic it was sacri- 
lege to leave these in the hands of the spoiler; the Protestant would 
not willingly give up the spoil. 

The contest was opened by the Protestants submitting a statement 
of their belief, divided into two parts, the one devoted to points of 
faith, the other to matters of practice. Prepared principally by 
Melanchthon, it presents their tenets in the mildest and least objec- 
tionable form, and becoming the recognized standard of their creed, 
it has attained a world-wide renown under the name of the Confes- 
sion of Augsburg. The questions of celibacy and monastic vows 
were ably and temperately argued ; their post-scriptural origin was 
shown, and the reasons which induced the reformers to reject them 
were placed in a light as little offensive as possible. 1 At first, a 
counter-statement was anticipated from the Catholics, and negotia- 
tions were expected to be carried on by a comparison of the two, but 
they took higher ground, and contented themselves with drawing up 
a refutation of the Confession. The emperor was firm. His aspi- 
rations for the universal monarchy, which ever eluded his grasp, did 
not comport with encouraging independence of thought and freedom 
of religious belief. In his theory, uniform subordination of religion 
was a necessary element of the political system which was to make 
him sovereign of Europe, and he would listen to no compromise. 
He was inclined to summary measures, but the Catholic princes were 
hardly prepared for the consequences of an immediate rupture, and, 
after a threatening interval, another effort was made to effect a 
reconciliation. Conferences between the leading theologians on 



Confess. Augustanss P. II. Art. ii., 
In his Apology for the Augsburg 



of Melanchthon is warmed in describ- 
ing the hideous licentiousness caused 
by the law of celibacy (Lutheri Opp. 
Jense, T. IV. p. 252-3). 



EFFOKTS AT ACCOMMODATION. 



437 



both sides took place, and the Lutherans, warned of their danger, 
were more disposed than ever to make concessions and to accept 
such terms as the stronger party were willing to offer them. At 
length, on the 8th of September, the draft of a proposed plan of 
accord was laid before the Diet. In this the points in dispute were 
referred to that future cecumenic council which had so long been 
demanded as the panacea for all ecclesiastical ills, and which, after 
more than thirty years of continued expectation, was destined to fail 
so miserably in reconciling difficulties. Such monasteries as had 
not been destroyed were to be maintained in the exercise of the cus- 
tomary rites and observances of religion. Abbots and communities 
who had been ejected were to be allowed to return; and all religious 
houses which had been emptied of their occupants were to be placed 
in the hands of officers appointed by the emperor, who were to ad- 
minister to their possessions until the future council should decide 
upon all the points relating to monachism; the Protestants thus 
relieving themselves of the accusation that they were actuated by 
motives of worldly gain. Similar proposals were made with regard 
to communion in the two elements and clerical marriage. These 
were left as open questions for the council to settle, while a phrase 
of doubtful import subjected them in the mean time to the govern- 
ments of the several states. 1 The concessions in this project, how- 
ever, though they might suit the views of temperate doctors and 
princes in Germany, and though even the Roman curia might be 
willing to grant them in order to save its threatened temporal power 
over the Teutonic states, did not suit the policy of Charles, who 
regarded the church as simply one of the instruments with which he 
was to build up his universal empire. 2 It was not difficult for him, 
therefore, to bring to naught all such schemes of conciliation. The 
restoration of all abbots and monks was ordered; restitution of 
church lands was commanded, or their delivery to the emperor to 
be held until the assembling of the future council ; and when the 
Diet adjourned, Charles issued a decree enjoining on all married 
priests to abstain from their wives, to eject them, and to seek abso- 
lution from their ordinaries. 3 



1 Deliberat. de Concordia etc. c. iii., 
v. (Goldast. I. 509). 

2 See Letter of Bergenroth to Komilly, 
from Simancas, June 14th, 1863 



(Cartwright's Memoir of Bergenroth, 
London, 1870, p. 124). 

3 Sentent. Caroli Y. \ 5 (Ibid. I. 
510).— Kescript. Caroli Y. \ 5 (Ibid. 
III. 512). Henke, Append, ad Calixt. 
pp. 595-6. 



438 THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 

The threatening aspect of affairs warned the Protestant princes 
that no time was to be lost in making provision for mutual defence, 
and ere the year was out the famous League of Schmalkalden enabled 
them to present a united front to the powers which they had virtually 
defied. Into the political history of that eventful time it is not my 
province to enter. Suffice it to say that they were able to maintain 
their position, and in their own states to oppose the reactionary 
movement which at times seemed to be on the point of destroying 
all that had been accomplished. 

In this their task was complicated by the extravagances of those 
whose enthusiasm, unbalanced by reason, carried them beyond 
restraint. If Luther had found it no easy task to break the chains 
which for so many ages had kept in check the spirit of free inquiry, 
he discovered that it was impossible to control that spirit once let 
loose ; and the wild excesses of Anabaptism were at once the exag- 
geration and the opprobrium of Lutheranism. Originally earnest 
and self-denying, the primitive Anabaptists had captivated the fiery 
soul of Carlostadt, while Luther was in his Patmos of Wartburg, 
but the pure asceticism of Storck and Muncer gradually grew irk- 
some to the followers who flocked to their standard, and, if we may 
believe contemporary writers, the unchaining of human passions in 
that lawless horde resulted in the igneum baptisma, or fiery baptism, 
by which at Munster John Mathison encouraged the most hideous 
licentiousness in the elect, to be followed up by his successor, John 
of Leyden, who, in imitation of the patriarchs, promulgated the law 
of polygamy. 1 

Luther, however, was quite as resolute in setting limits to his 
movement as Borne had been in forbidding all progress, and the 
Anabaptists were to him enemies as detestable as Catholics. The 
Protestant princes, moreover, had too much worldly wisdom to im- 
peril their dangerous career by any alliance with fanatics whose 
extravagances provoked abhorrence so general. The cause of the 
Reformation, therefore, although it suffered no little from so por- 
tentous an illustration of the dangers resulting from the destruction 
of the ancient barriers, escaped all contamination in itself, and its 
leaders pursued their course undeviatingly. 

Meanwhile the League of Schmalkalden accomplished its purpose. 
Henry VIII. and Francis I. were eager to seize the opportunity of 

1 Kerssenbroch Bell. Anabaptist, cap. 15, 31. 



FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS. 



439 



encouraging dissension in the empire. The Turk became more 
menacing than ever. Charles, always ready to yield for a time 
when opposition was impolitic, gracefully abandoned the position 
assumed at Augsburg; and the negotiations of Schweinfurth and 
Niirnberg resulted in the decree of the Diet of Ratisbon in 1532, 
by which, until the assembling of the future council, all religious 
disturbances were prohibited, and the imperial chamber was com- 
manded to undertake no prosecutions on account of heresy. Tol- 
eration was thus practically established for the moment, but the 
abbots and monks who had been ejected, and who had been antici- 
pating their restoration, became naturally restive. Charles cun- 
ningly sent from Italy full powers to the chamber to decide as to 
what causes arose from religious disputes, and what were simply 
civil or criminal. Thus intrusted with the interpretation of the 
Ratisbon decree, the chamber assumed that claims on church lands 
were not included in the forbidden class, while old edicts prohibiting 
the observances of Lutheranism brought all religious questions within 
the scope of criminal law. The promised toleration was thus prac- 
tically denied, but, fortunately for the Protestants, Ferdinand was 
anxiously negotiating for their recognition of his dignity as king of 
the Romans, and by the Transaction of Cadam in 1533 he purchased 
the coveted homage by accepting their construction of the edict of 
Ratisbon. 

Still the Protestants complained of persecution and the Catholics 
of proselytism. The ensuing fifteen years were filled with a series 
of bootless negotiations, pretended settlements, quarrels, recrimina- 
tions, and mutual encroachments which year after year occupied the 
successive Diets, and kept Germany constantly trembling on the 
verge of a desolating civil war. It would be useless to disturb the 
dust that covers these forgotten transactions, which can teach us 
nothing save that the Protestants still refused to recognize that the 
schjsm was past human power to heal ; that Rome, recovering from 
her temporary hesitation, would not abate one jot of her pretensions 
to save her supremacy over half of Christendom ; * and that Charles, 



1 How little the situation was com- 
prehended is amusingly shown in a 
letter from an enlightened and liberal 
prelate, Johann Schmidt, Bishop of 
Vienna, to Ferdinand, in 1540, con- 
cerning some proposed negotiations 
then on foot for a reconciliation between 
the churches. He lays down as a con- 



dition precedent to reunion that all the 
church lands confiscated by the Protes- 
tants shall be restored, and the monastic 
orders reestablished. The mesne profits, 
he admits, cannot be collected, but 
some composition for them should be 
made. — Le Plat, Monument. Concil. 
Trident. II. 649. 



440 



THE EEFOEMATION IN GERMANY. 



as a wily politician, was always ready in adversity to abandon with 
a good grace that which he had arrogantly seized in prosperity. 1 
How eager, indeed, were the Protestants to effect some compromise 
which should relieve them from their exceptional position is strik- 
ingly manifest in the Articles which Melanchthon and his friends, 
in 1535, submitted to Francis I., after the Sorbonne had refused to 
enter into a disputation or conference with them. In this document 
all non-essentials were abandoned ; doctrinal dissidences were skil- 
fully evaded, and stress only was laid upon such regulations as should 
remove the external corruption of the church. Melanchthon pro- 
posed that the monastic orders should be continued, but that the 
vows should not be perpetual, so that religion might not be disgraced 
by the excesses of those who had mistaken their vocation. So, as 
regards priestly celibacy, he proposed that, as human nature ren- 
dered it impossible to supply the multitude of parishes with men 
able to live in continence, those who could not preserve their purity 
should be allowed to marry ; while, to prevent the dilapidation of 
church property, the higher positions should be reserved to men of 
mature age, who could lead a single life. 2 The Sorbonne, in reply, 
condescended to no argument, but contented itself with asserting 
that the Protestants desired the subversion of all religion, while, on 
the other hand, Melanchthon had the satisfaction of being proclaimed 
a traitor by the Germans. 

In all this the only point which possesses special interest for us is 
another authoritative attempt at reconciling the irreconcilable which 
occurred in 1541. After a conference between Melanchthon and 
Dr. Eck at Worms, Charles himself presented to the Diet of Eatis- 
bon a statement of the questions in dispute, with propositions for mu- 
tual concession and compromise. In the course of this, he reviewed 
the practice of the church in various ages with regard to sacerdotal 
celibacy, admitting that the enforcement of it was not in accordance 
with the ancient canons, and indicating a willingness to see it abro- 
gated. 3 The Protestants, who were ready to make many sacrifices 
for peace, hailed this intimation with triumph, stoutly insisting on 
the repeal of the obnoxious rule, which they stigmatized as unjust 



1 An elaborate series of documents 
relating to these transactions may be 
found in G-oldast. Constit. Imp. I. 511, 
III. 172-235. Also in Le Plat, Mon- 
ument. Concil. Trident. Yol. II. 



2 Artie. Melanch. ad Kegem Francise, 
No. x., xi. (Le Plat, op. cit. II. 

785-7). 

3 Lib. ad Eationem Concord, ineun- 
dam Art. xxii. § 13^ (G-oldast. II. 199). 



THE INTEEIM 



441 



and pernicious. 1 So nearly did the parties at length approach each 
other, that there appeared every reason to anticipate a successful 
result to the effort, when Paul III. again interfered and pronounced 
all the proceedings null and void, as the church alone had power to 
regulate its internal affairs. The expectations excited by these ne- 
gotiations naturally stimulated the desire of the people for a change 
in the discipline of the church, and the next year we find Paul III. 
obliged to exhort the Bishop of Merseburg to resist the clamors of 
his subjects, who demanded the abrogation of priestly celibacy and 
the use of the cup for the laity, under threats of ejecting him. The 
pope evidently considered the Germans unduly impatient, since they 
objected to await the assembling of the Council of Trent, which was 
called to decide upon these matters. 2 



Charles had long recognized that the perpetual menace of a pow- 
erful confederation such as the Schmalkaldic League, entertaining 
constant relations with the external enemies of the empire, was in- 
compatible with the peace of Germany and with an imperial power 
such as he was resolved to wield. The time at last came for the 
development of his plans. The skill of Alva and the treachery of 
Maurice of Saxony were crowned with success. The battle of Muhl- 
berg broke the power of the Protestants utterly, and laid them help- 
less at the feet of their bitterest foes. Yet the progress of the new 
ideas had already placed them beyond the control of even the tri- 
umphant Charles, though he had the Elector of Saxony and the 
Landgrave of Hesse in his dungeons. When, at the Diet of Augs- 
burg, in 1548, he proposed the curious arrangement known as the 
Interim, by which he hoped to keep matters quiet until the final 
verdict of that cecumenic council which constantly vanished in the 
distance, he felt it necessary to permit all married priests to retain 
their wives until the question should be decided by the future council. 
A faint expression of a preference for celibacy, moreover, was sig- 
nificant both in what it said and what it left unsaid. 3 



1 Kespons. Protestant. Art. x. § 3 
(Ibid. II. 208). This was still more 
strongly insisted on in a paper subse- 
quently drawn up by Bucer and pre- 
sented in the name of the Protestants. 
— Kespons. Protestant, c. 11-14 (Ibid. 
p. 213). 

2 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Tri- 
dent. III. 152-3. 



3 Et quanquam cum Apostolo sen- 
tiendum eum qui ccelebs est curare quse 
sunt Domini etc. (I. Cor. vii.) eoque 
magis optandum multos inveniri clericos 
qui cum ccelibes sint vere etiam con- 
tineant, tamen quum multi qui minis- 
terii ecclesiastici functiones tenent, jam 
multis in locis duxerint uxores, quas a 
se dimittere nolint ; super ea re gener- 
alis concilii sententia expectetur, cum 



442 



THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY, 



The Interim, of course, satisfied neither party. The Catholics 
regarded it as an unauthorized reformation, the Protestants as dis- 
guised popery. Charles, however, in the plenitude of his power, 
obliged many of the Lutheran states to accept it ; while, as regards 
the Catholics, he was perhaps not sorry to show the pope that he, 
too, like Henry VIII., could regulate the consciences of his subjects, 
and prescribe their religious faith. He had broken with Paul III. ; 
the council of Trent, against his wishes, had been removed to Bo- 
logna on a frivolous pretext ; and a schism like that of England was 
apparently impending. At the least, Charles might not unreason- 
ably desire to manifest that at last he was independent of that papal 
power with which mutual necessities had so long enforced the closest 
relations, and to prove that deference to his wishes was henceforth to 
be the price of his all-important support. He demanded that legates 
should be sent to Germany armed with extraordinary powers, among 
which was included authority to grant dispensations to married priests. 
Paul III. referred the request to the Sacred College and to the council 
then sitting at Bologna, and it was unanimously replied that it should 
be granted, with the limitations that monks should not be included, 
and that priests thus permitted to retain their wives should not exer- 
cise their functions or enjoy the fruits of their benefices. 1 That Paul 
forthwith dispatched three nuncios entrusted with authority to do this 
shows not only the disposition which then existed to relax the rigor 
of the canons respecting celibacy, but also the importance which the 
question had assumed in the religious disputes of the time, 2 though 
an absolute refusal was soon afterwards returned to the request of a 
German prince (supposed to be the Duke of Bavaria) requesting for 



alioqui mutatio in ea re, ut nunc sunt 
tempora, sine gravi rerum perturbatione 
nunc fieri non possit. — Interim cap. 
xxyi. § 17. 

Charles must have entertained the 
expectation that a change would be 
authorized by the council of Trent, or 
prudence would have dictated the 
policy of not leaving the matter open 
with the consciousness that the diffi- 
culty could only become daily greater 
by tolerance. 

1 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Tri- 
dent. IY. 19-25. 

2 Pallavicini, Storia del Concilio di 
Trento Lib. xn. c. 8. Zaccaria (ISTuova 
Giustificaz. pp. 145, 266), while admit- 



ting the fact, states that the original of 
this document has been sought for in 
vain ; though it had long before been 
published by Dom Martene (Ampliss. 
Collect. VIII. 1203). In appointing, 
however, Jodocus, Bishop of Lubec, as 
a substitute to exercise their powers, 
the legates require that priests thus 
restored shall abandon their wives — a 
condition not expressed in the original 
bull (Ibid. p. 1211). 

Both from this and from the lan- 
guage of the Interim, it appears 
that even the Catholic priesthood had 
begun to arrogate for themselves the 
right of marriage. That such was the 
case to a great extent will be seen here- 
after. 



THE TRANSACTION OF PASSAU. 443 

his subjects the use of the cup, priestly marriage, and the relaxation 
of the obligation of fasting. 1 

Temporary expedients and compromises such as these are inter- 
esting merely as they mark the progress of opinion. Paltry make- 
shifts to elude the decision of that which had to be decided, they 
exercised little real influence on the history of the time. It is true 
that when Charles, in 1551, at the Diet of Augsburg, issued a call 
for the reassembling of the council of Trent, he confirmed the Interim 
until that council should decide all unsettled questions, 2 yet this con- 
firmation was destined to be effective for a period ludicrously brief. 
A fresh treason of Maurice of Saxony undid all that his former 
plotting had accomplished; and, while Henry II. was winning at 
the expense of the empire the delusive title of Conqueror, Charles 
found himself reduced to the hard necessity of restoring all that his 
crooked policy had for so many years been devoted to extorting. 
The Transaction of Passau, signed August 2d, 1552, gave full lib- 
erty of conscience to the Lutheran states, until a national council or 
Diet should devise means of restoring the unity of the church ; and 
in case such means could not be agreed upon, then the rights guar- 
anteed by the Transaction were granted in perpetuity. 3 If Charles 
was disposed to withdraw the concessions thus exacted of him, the 
miserable siege of Metz and the increasing desire for abdication pre- 
vented him from attempting it ; and, at the Diet of Augsburg, in 
1555, the states and cities of the Augsburg Confession were con- 
firmed in their right to enjoy the practices of their religion in peace. 4 

The long struggle thus was over. The public law of Germany at 
last recognized the legality of the transactions based upon the Refor- 
mation, and not the least in importance among those transactions 
were the marriages of the ministers of Christ. 



i Le Plat, T. TV. p. 27. 

2 Eecess. ann. 1551 c. 10 (Goldast. 
II. 341). 



3 Transae. Pataviens. Artie, de Kelig. 
(Ibid. I. 573). 

* Ibid. I. 574. 



XXVI 
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



The abrogation of celibacy in England was a process of far more 
perplexity and intricacy than in any other country which adopted 
the Reformation. Perhaps this may be partially explained by the 
temperament of the race, whose fierce spirit of independence made 
them quick to feel and impatient to suffer the manifold evils of the 
sacerdotal system, while their reverential conservatism rendered them 
less disposed to adopt a radical cure than their Continental neighbors. 

In no country of Europe had the pretensions of the papal power 
been so resolutely set aside. In no country had ecclesiastical abuses 
been more earnestly attacked or more persistently held up'for pop- 
ular odium, and the applause which greeted all who boldly denounced 
the shortcomings of priest and prelate shows how keenly the people 
felt the evils to which they were exposed. William Langlande, the 
monk of Malvern, was no heretic, yet he was unsparing in his 
reprobation of the corruptions of the church: — 

" Eight so out of holi chirche, Somonours and hir lemmannes ; 

Alle yveles springeth, That that with gile was geten, 

There inparfit preesthode is, TJngraciousliche is despended ; 

Prechours and techeris So harlotes and hores 

Arn holpe with swiche goodes, 

And prechours after silver, And Goddes folk, for defaute thereof, 

Executours and sodenes, Por-faren and spillen." 1 

And he boldly prophesied the violent downfall of the whole fabric — 

" Eight so, ye clerkes, 

For youre coveitise, er longe, Leveth it wel ye bisshopes 

Shal thei demen dos ecclesice, The lordshipe of your londes 

And youre pride depose. For evere shul ye lese, 

Deposuit potentes de sede, etc. And lyven as levitici, etc." 2 

But while the people greeted these assaults with the keenest pleasure, 
they were attached to the old observances, and were in no haste to 



1 Vision of Piers Ploughman, 
Wright's ed., pp. 300, 303. 

2 Ibid. p. 325. — According to David 



Buchanan, Langlande was also author 
of a tract "Pro conjugio sacerdotum." 
(Ibid. Introduction, p. x.) 



COLET AND MORE. 



445 



see the predictions of the poet fulfilled. A little sharp persecution 
was sufficient to suppress all outward show of Lollardry, and there 
was no chance in England for the fierce revolutionary enthusiasm 
of the Taborites. 

As the sixteenth century opened, John Colet did good work in 
disturbing the stagnation of the schools by his contempt for the 
petrified theological science of the schoolmen. His endeavor to 
revert to the Scriptures as the sole source of religious belief was a 
step in advance, while he was unsparing in his denunciations of the 
corruptions which were as rife in the English church as we have seen 
them elsewhere. Yet Colet, though at one time taxed with heretical 
leanings, kept carefully within the pale of orthodoxy, and seems 
never to have entertained the idea that the evils which he deplored 
were to be attacked save by a renewal of the fruitless iteration of 
obsolete canons. 1 Perhaps, however, his friend and disciple, Sir 
Thomas More, is the best example of this frame of mind in Eng- 
land's worthiest men, the besetting weakness of which made the 
Anglican reformation a struggle whose vicissitudes can scarce be 
said to have even yet reached their final development. 

Before Luther had raised the standard of revolt, More keenly 
appreciated the derelictions of the church, and allowed his wit to 
satirize its vices w.ith a freedom which showed the scantiest respect 
for the sanctity claimed by its hierarchy. 2 Yet when Luther came 
with his heresies to sweep away all abuses, More's gentle and tender 



1 In a sermon before the Convocation 
of 1512, Colet is very severe upon the 
vices of the church — " we are troubled 
in these days by heretics — men mad 
with strange folly— but this heresy of 
theirs is not so pestilential and perni- 
cious to us and the people as the vicious 
and depraved lives of the clergy" — 
and he urges the prelates to revive the 
ancient canons, the enforcement of 
which would purify the church. (See- 
bohm's Oxford Keformers of 1498, p. 
170. London, 1867.) 

The title of this work seems to me a 
misnomer. Neither Colet nor Erasmus 
had the aggressive spirit of martyrdom 
which was essential to the character of 
a reformer in those fierce times. They 
could deplore existing evils, but lacked 
all practical boldness in applying reme- 
dies, and their influence is only to be 
traced in the minds which the}' unwit- 
tingly trained to do work which they 
themselves abhorred. 



2 Thus, in his Epigrams, he ridicules 
the bishops as a class : — 
"Tarn male cantasti possis ut episcopus 
esse, 
Tarn bene legisti, ut non tamen esse queas. 
Non satis esse putet, si quis vitabit utrum- 
vis, 
Sed fieri si vis praesul, utrumque cave." 
T. Mori Opp. p. 249. Franco- 
furti, 1689. 

And he addresses a parish priest : — 

" Quid faciant fugiantve tui, quo cernere 
possint, 
Vita potest claro pro speculo esse tua. 
Tantum opus admonituest, ut te intueantur, 
et ut tu 
Qute facis, hsec fugiant : qua? fugis, hasc 
faciant." 

Ibid. p. 247. 
See also his epigrams " In Posthumum 
Episcopum," "In Episcopum illitera- 
tum," " De Nautis ejicientibus Mona- 
chum," etc. 



446 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



spirit was roused to a vulgarity of vituperation which earned for him 
a distinguished place among the foul-mouthed polemics of the time, 
and which is absolutely unfit for translation. 1 As regards ascetic 
observances, before the Lutheran movement, More seems to have 
inclined towards condemning all practices that were not in accord- 
ance with human nature, though he appears willing to admit that 
there may be some special sanctity, though not wisdom, in conquer- 
ing nature. 2 After the commencement of the Reformation, however, 
his views underwent a reaction, and he not only defended monastic 
vows, but he even went so far as to argue that by the recent mar- 
riages of the Saxon reformers God had manifested his signal dis- 
pleasure, for in the old law true priests could be joined only to the 
chastest virgins, while God permitted these false pastors to take to 
wife none but public strumpets. 3 If he accused Luther of sweeping 
away the venerable traditions of man and of God, 4 he showed how 
conscientious was this rigid conservatism when he laid his head upon 
the block in testimony for the principal creation and bulwark of tra- 
dition — the papal supremacy. 

A community thus halting between an acute perception of existing 
evils and a resolute determination not to remove them was exactly 
in the temper to render the great movement of the sixteenth century 



1 Eesponsio ad Lutherum, passim: 
"Pater, frater, potator Lutherus," 
seems to be a favorite expression, but is 
mild in comparison with others — 
" novum inferorum Deum," " Satanista 
Lutherus," "pediculoso fraterculo." 
Luther's friends are " nebulonum, po- 
tatorum, scortatorum, sicariorum, sena- 
tum," and More winds up his theologi- 
cal argument with — " furiosum frater- 
culum et latrinarium nebulonem cum 
suis furiis et furoribus, cum suis merdis 
et stercoribus cacantem cacatumque 
relinquere." 

Luther was himself a master in 
theological abuse, but More's admiring 
biographer, Stapleton, boasts that the 
German was appalled at the superior 
vigor of the Englishman, and for the 
first time in his life he declined further 
controversy — "magis mutus factus est 
quam piscis." (Stapletoni Vit. T. 
Mori cap. iv.) As More, however, 
published the tract under the name of 
William Kosse, an Englishman who 
had recently died in Home, Luther's 
reticence is more easily to be accounted 
for. 



2 In one passage More describes his 
Utopians as considering virtue to con- 
sist in living according to nature. 
" JSTempe virtutem definiunt, secundum 
naturam vivere : ad id siquidem a Deo 
institutos esse nos. . . . Vitam ergo 
jucundam, inquiunt, id est voluptatem, 
tanquam operationum omnium finem, 
ipsa nobis natura prrescribit : ex cujus 
prsescripto vivere, virtutem definiunt " 
(Utopise Lib. n. Tit. de Peregrinatione). 
In another passage, however, he de- 
scribes two sects or heresies, the one 
consisting of men who abstained from 
marriage and the use of flesh, the other 
of those who devoted themselves to 
labor, marrying as a duty and indulging 
in food to increase their strength, and 
says of them "Hos Utopiani pruden- 
tiores, at illos sanctiores reputant (Ibid. 
Tit. de Keligionibus). 

3 Respons. ad Lutherum Perorat. 

It should be borne in mind that this 
was written after his friend Erasmus 
had publicly given in his adhesion to 
marriage as the only remedy for sacer- 
dotal corruption. 

4 Ibid. Lib. i. cap. iv. 



WOLSEY'S ASSAULT ON" THE MONASTERIES. 447 

as disastrous to themselves as possible. How to meet the inevitable 
under such conditions was a problem which well might tax the 
acutest intellect, and Wolsey, whose fate it was to undertake the 
task, seems to have been inspired with more than his customary 
audacious ingenuity in seeking the solution. 

Wolsey himself was no ascetic, as the popular inscription over the 
door of his palace — " Domus meretricium Domini Cardinalis " — 
sufficiently attests. A visitation of the religious houses undertaken 
in 1511 by Archbishop Warham had revealed all the old iniquities 
without calling forth any remedy beyond an admonition. 1 In 1518, 
Wolsey himself had attempted a systematic reformation in his diocese 
of York, and had revived the ancient canons punishing concubinage 
among his priesthood; 2 and in 1519 we find him applying to Leo X. 
for a Bull conferring special power to correct the enormities of the 
clergy. 3 When, in 1523, he proposed a general visitation for the 
reformation of the ecclesiastical body, Fox, Bishop of Winchester, 
urged it as in the highest degree necessary, stating that he himself 
had for three years been devoting all his energies to restore discipline 
in his diocese, and that his efforts had been so utterly fruitless that 
he had abandoned all hope of any change for the better. 4 Cranmer, 
indeed, in his " Confutation of Unwritten Verities," had no hesitation 
to say that " within my memory, which is above thirty years, and 
also by the information of others that be twenty years elder than I, 
I could never perceive or learn that any one priest, under the pope's 
kingdom, was ever punished for advoutry by his ordinary." 5 It 
may readily be believed, therefore, that Wolsey fully recognized the 
utter inefficiency of the worn-out weapons of discipline. Yet he was 
too shrewd a statesman not to foresee that reformation from within 
or from without must come, and, in taking the initiative, he com- 
menced by quietly and indirectly attacking the monastic orders. 
As a munificent patron of letters, it was natural that he should 
emulate Merton and Wykeham in founding a college at Oxford ; 
and " Cardinal's College," now Christ Church, became the lever 
with which to topple over the vast monastic system of England. 

The development of the plan was characteristically insidious. 
By a Bull of April 3d, 1524 (confirmed by Henry, May 10th), 



1 Eroude's England, Ch. x. 

2 Wilkins III. 669, 678. 



4 Strype's Eccles. Memorials, T. I. 
App. p. 19. 



3 Card. Eboracens. Epist. v. (Mar- * pipe's Memorials of Cranmer, 
tene Ampliss. Collect. III. 1289). I a *" lL ' cn> v * 



448 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 

Clement VII. authorized him to suppress the priory of St. Fredis- 
wood at Oxford, and to remove the monks for the purpose of con- 
verting it into a "Collegium Clericorum Seculorum." 1 This was 
followed by a Bull, dated August 21st of the same year, empowering 
him as legate to make inquisition and reformation in all religious 
houses throughout the kingdom, to incarcerate and punish the 
inmates, and to deprive them of their property and privileges, all 
grants or charters to the contrary notwithstanding. 2 The real pur- 
port of this extraordinary commission is shown by the speedy issue 
of yet another Bull, dated September 11th, conceding to him the 
confiscation of monasteries to the amount of 3000 ducats annual 
rental, for the endowment of his college, and alleging as a reason 
for the measure that many establishments had not more than five or 
six inmates. 3 

The affair was now fully in train, and proceeded with accelerating 
momentum. On the 3d of July, 1525, Henry confirmed the incor- 
poration of the college; his letters-patent of May 1st, 1526, enu- 
merate eighteen monasteries suppressed for its benefit, while other 
letters of May 10th grant seventy-one churches or rectories for its 
support, and yet other grants are alluded to as made in letters which 
have not been preserved. 4 In 1528 these were followed by various 
other donations of religious houses and manors; and during the 
same year Wolsey founded another Cardinal's College at Ipswich, 
which became a fresh source of absorption. 5 

Had Henry VIII. entertained any preconceived design of sup- 
pressing the religious houses, his impatient temper would scarcely 
have allowed him to remain so long a witness of this spoliation 
without taking his share and carrying the matter out with his 
accustomed boldness and disregard of consequences. At length, 
however, he claimed his portion, and procured from Clement a Bull 
dated November 2d, 1528, conceding to him, for the benefit of the 
old foundations of the King's Colleges at Cambridge and Windsor, 
the suppression of monasteries to the annual value of 8000 ducats. 6 



1 Bymer's Eoedera, XI Y. 15. 

2 Wilkins III. 704.— Bishop Burnet 
says that Wolsey 's design in procuring 
this Bull was to suppress all monas- 
teries, but that he was persuaded to 
abandon his purpose on account of 
opposition and dread of scandals. — 
Hist. Keform. Vol. I. p. 20 (Ed. 1679). 

3 Bymer, XIV. 24.— Confirmed by 
the king, January 7, 1525 (Ibid. p. 32 j. 



4 Ibid. pp. 156-6, 172-5. 

5 Ibid. pp. 240-44, 250-58. See a 
letter of the English ambassadors at 
Kome to Wolsey, describing a conference 
on this subject with the Pope, wherein 
he freely acknowledged the propriety ot 
destroying those houses which were 
nothing but a " Scandalum religionis." 
— Strype, Eccles. Memorials, I. App. 58. 

6 Kymer, XIV. pp. 270-1. 



wolsey's assault on the monasteeies. 449 

This was followed by another, a few days later, empowering Wolsey 
and Campeggi, co-legates in the affair of Queen Katharine's divorce, 
to unite to other monasteries all those containing less than twelve 
inmates — thus suppressing the latter, of which the number was very 
large. 1 Another Bull of the same date (November 12th) attacked 
the larger abbeys, which had thus far escaped. It ordered the two 
cardinals, under request from the king, to inquire into the propriety 
of suppressing the rich monasteries enjoying over 10,000 ducats per 
annum, for the purpose of converting them into bishoprics, on the 
plea that the seventeen sees of the kingdom were insufficient for the 
spiritual wants of the people. 2 The report of the cardinals apparently 
seconded the views of Henry, for Clement granted to them, May 
29th, 1529, the power of creating and arranging bishoprics at their 
discretion, and of sacrificing additional monasteries when necessary 
to provide adequate revenues. 3 It is probable that the monks who 
had been unceremoniously deprived of their possessions did not in 
all cases submit without resistance, for the Bull of November 12th, 

1528, suppressing the smaller houses, was repeated August 31st, 

1529, with the suggestive addition of authority to call in the assist- 
ance of the secular arm. 4 

Wolsey was now tottering to his fall. Process against him was 
commenced on October 9th, 1529, and on the 18th the Great Seal 
was delivered to More. His power, however, had lasted long enough 
to break down all the safeguards which had for so many centuries 
grown around the sacred precincts of ecclesiastical property; and 
the rich foundations which covered so large a portion of English ter- 
ritory lay defenceless before the cupidity of a despot, who rarely 
allowed any consideration, human or divine, to interfere with his 
wishes, whose extravagance rendered him eager to find new sources 
of supply for an exhausted treasury, and whose temper had been 
aroused by the active support lent by the preaching friars to the 
party of Queen Katharine in the affair of the divorce. Yet it is 
creditable to Henry's self-command that the blow did not fall sooner, 
although it came at last. 

It is not my province to enter into the details of Henry's miserable 
quarrel with Rome, which, except in its results, is, from every point 

1 Kymer, XIV. 272-3. 

2 Ibid. 273-5. 

3 Ibid. 291-3. 



4 Ibid. 345-6. A document showing; 



one phase of the struggle may be found 
in Strype's Memorials I. Append, p. 89. 
It is to the credit of "Wolsey that he 
retained his interest in his colleges even 
after his fall. See his letter to Gardiner 
of July 23rd, 1530 (Ibid. p. 92). 



29 



450 



THE ANGLICAN CHUKCH 



of view, one of the most humiliating pages of history. The year 
1532 saw the proclamation of the king commanding the support of 
his subjects in the impending rupture, and the subscription of the 
clergy to a paper which, with unparalleled servility, placed the whole 
ecclesiastical constitution of the kingdom in his absolute power. 1 
The following year his long-protracted divorce from Katharine of 
Arragon was consummated ; the annates were withdrawn from the 
pope, and Henry assumed the title of Supreme Head of the Church 
of England. 2 In 1535 an obedient Parliament confirmed the acts 
of the sovereign, and forbade the promulgation of any canons by 
synods or convocations without his approval. The power of the 
pope was abolished by proclamation ; and Universities and prelates 
rivalled each other in obsequiously transferring to Henry the rever- 
ence due to Rome. 3 

The greater portion of the monasteries, which had already experi- 
enced a foretaste of the wrath to come, hastened to proclaim their 
adhesion to the new theological autocracy, and means not the most 
gentle were found to persuade the remainder. The Carthusians of 
the Charter House of London gave especial trouble, and the contest 
between them and the king affords a vivid picture of the times. 
There is something very affecting in the account given by Strype of 
the humble but resolute resignation with which the prior and his 
monks prepared themselves for martyrdom in vindication of the 
papal supremacy. 4 Their courage was soon put to the test. Be- 
tween the 27th of April and the 4th of August, 1535, the prior 
and eleven of his monks were put to death with all the horrors of 
the punishment for high treason ; 5 but neither this nor the efforts 
of a new and more loyal prior were able to produce submission. In 
1536 ten of the most unyielding were sent to other houses, where 
several of them were subsequently executed, and in 1537 ten more 
were thrown into Newgate, where nine of them died almost immedi- 
ately — it is to be presumed from the rigor of their confinement and 
the foulness of the jail. In 1539 the few that remained were ex- 
pelled ; the house was seized and used as an arsenal, until it was 



1 Pefcoek's Records of the Reforma- 
tion No. 276 (Vol. II. p. 259). 

2 Wilkins III. 755-62. 

3 Ibid. 770-82, 789.— Parliamentary 
Hist, of England, I. 525. In 1532 
Henry had complained to his Parlia- 
ment that the clergy were but half 



subjects to him, in consequence of their 
oaths to the pope, and. he desired that 
some remedy should be found for this 
state of things (Ibid. p. 519). 

4 Strype, Eccles. Memor. I. 195. 

5 Suppression of Monasteries, p. 40 
(Camden Soc). — Strype, op. cit. p. 197. 



SUPPRESSION OF THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES. 451 

given to Sir Edward North, who changed it into a residence, pulling 
down the cloisters and converting the church into his parlor. 1 

The most conspicuous of the recalcitrants, however, was the pow- 
erful order of the Franciscans. These refused the oath exacted of 
them, causing no little trouble, and affording a cover for the intrigues 
of that large body of the clergy, who were dissatisfied with the inno- 
vations, but afraid of open opposition. 2 This precipitated the ruin 
of the monastic orders, which could not, under any circumstances, 
have been long delayed, and a general visitation was considered the 
most effective means of encompassing their destruction. It was ac- 
cordingly ordered in 1535, and as their immorality and neglect of 
their sacred duties had passed almost into a proverb, there was not 
much difficulty in accumulating evidence to justify the measure. 
The visitation was commanded to examine into the foundation, title, 
history, condition of discipline, and number and character of the 
inmates of all religious houses ; 3 and, as might have been expected, 
the report disclosed a state of affairs which called for the immediate 
removal of so foul a source of corruption and scandal. The visitors 
had their work assigned them in advance, and they performed it 
thoroughly; but we cannot assume that the evils which they 
described were the creation of their own invention to gratify the 
wishes and advance the purposes of their master. 

One of the earliest abbeys visited was that of Langdon, where the 
visitor, Dr. Leighton, suddenly breaking open the abbot's door, found 
him with his concubine, whose disguise as a man was discovered 
secreted in a coffer. Leighton's account of this little adventure 
" scribullede this Satterday," to his patron, Cromwell, is full of humor, 
showing how thoroughly he enjoyed his success, and how fully he 
was assured that the Secretary would likewise be gratified by it. 4 
Bishop Burnet's general summary of the result of the visitation 
asserts that " for the lewdness of the confessors of nunneries, and 
the great corruption of that state, whole houses being found almost 
all with child ; for the dissoluteness of abbots and the other monks 
and friars, not onlywith whores, but married women; and for their 
unnatural lusts and other brutal practices ; these are not fit to be 
spoken of, much less enlarged on, in a work of this nature. The 
full report of the visitation is lost, yet I have seen an extract of a 



1 Strype, op. cit. pp. 277-8. I 3 Wilkins III. 787. 

2 Burnet I. 182. I * Suppression of Monasteries, p. 175. 



452 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 



part of it, concerning 144 houses, that contains abominations in it 
equal to any that were in Sodom." 1 

The good bishop was not likely to extenuate what he had read, but 
we yet may readily believe the truth of his account of it, for we can- 
not assume that the charges were manufactured, like the accusations 
against the Templars, for the purpose of serving as an excuse for 
confiscation. The monasteries were not likely to have improved in 
morals since Archbishop Morton described a similar condition of 
affairs half a century earlier ; nor is there any ground for imagining 
them better than their Continental contemporaries, whose lapses were 
the subject of animadversion by censors favorable to the monastic 
system. Scarce anything, indeed, can be conceived worse than the 
condition of the German convents as described in a document drawn 
up by command of the Emperor Ferdinand to stimulate the sluggish- 
ness of the council of Trent. 2 A short account of " The Manner of 
Dissolving the Abbeys," by a contemporary, 3 states the result of the 
visitation in terms even stronger than those of Burnet, and Strype 
gives some most suggestive extracts from the report of the visitation 
of the diocese of Litchfield. 4 Descriptions of the disorders of special 
houses are very frequent in the private letters of the visitors and 
commissioners to Cromwell, 5 which may be the more readily believed, 
since they also report favorably of many abbeys as being well gov- 
erned, and of the utmost benefit to their neighborhoods through their 
generous hospitality and charity. It should be added that, in some 
districts at least, the morals of the laity were no better than those 
of the clergy. 6 Nicander Nuchas, who visited England about the 
year 1545, in relating the suppression of the monastic orders, gives 
as bad an account of their discipline as Burnet. He is not, of course, 
an original authority, but, as an impartial observer, his statements 
are worthy of consideration as reflecting the current views of society 
at the period. 7 It was evidently for the purpose of influencing public 
opinion abroad that a book on the subject was written in Italian by 
William Thomas, who summed up by stating that the visitors found 
"not seven, but more than 700,000 deadly sins," and who received 
the reward of his vivacity by being put to death under Queen Mary. 8 



1 Hist. Reform. I. 190-1. 

2 Le Plat V. 244-5. 

3 Suppression of Monasteries, p. 112. 

4 Eccles. Memorials, I. 256-7. 

5 Suppression of Monasteries, Nos. 



xvn., xxi. 
xcviii., &c. 



xxiv., xlii., xlv., xlvii. 



6 Ibid. 3STo. cxx. 

7 Travels of ISTicander Nucius, pp. 
68-71 (Camden Soc). 

8 Strype, Eccles. Memor. I. 249. 



THE BEGG-AKS 7 PETITION 



453 



A portion of the people were ready and eager to welcome the sec- 
ularization of the religious houses. Their views and arguments are 
set forth with more force than elegance in the well-known "Beggars' 
Petition," which calculates that, besides the tithes, one-third of the 
kingdom was ecclesiastical property, and that these vast possessions 
were devoted to the support of a body of men who found their sole 
serious occupation in destroying the peace of families and corrupting 
the virtue of women. The economical injury to the commonwealth, 
and the interference with the royal prerogative of the ecclesiastical 
system, were argued with much cogency, and the king was entreated 
to destroy it by the most summary methods. That any one should 
venture to publish so violent an attack upon the existing church, at 
a time when punishment so prompt followed all indiscretions of this 
nature, renders this production peculiarly significant both as to the 
temper of the educated portion of the people, and the presumed in- 
tentions of the king. 1 

The visitation produced the desired effect. In 1536, after reading 
the report, Parliament passed without opposition a bill suppressing, 



1 As published in the Harleian Mis- 
cellany, the Beggars' Petition bears the 
date of 1538, but internal evidence 
would assign it to a time anterior to 
the suppression of the monasteries, and 
Burnet attributes it to the period under 
consideration, saying that it was written 
by Simon Fish, of Gray's Inn, that it 
took mightily with the public, and that 
when it was handed to the king by 
Ann Boleyn, "he lik'd it well, and 
would not suffer anything to be done 
to the author" (Hist. Keform. I. 160). 
Froude, indeed, assigns it to the date of 
1528, and states that Wolsey issued a 
proclamation against it, and further, 
that Simon Fish, the author, died in 
1528 (Hist. Engl. Ch. vi.), while 
Strype (Eccles. Memorialsl. 165) in- 
cludes it in a list of books prohibited 
by Cuthbert, Bishop of London, in 
1526. In the edition of 1546, the date 
of 1524 is attributed to it. 

The tone of that which was thus 
equally agreeable to the court and to 
the city, may be judged from the fol- 
lowing extracts, which are by no means 
the plainest spoken that might be 
selected. 

" \ 13. Yea, and what do they more ? 
Truly, nothing but apply themselves 
by all the sleights they may to have to 
do with every man's wife, every man's 



daughter, and every man's maid ; that 
cuckoldry should reign over all among 
your subjects ; that no man should 
know his own child ; that their bas- 
tards might inherit the possessions of 
every man, to put the right-begotten 
children clean beside their inheritance, 
in subversion of all estates and godly 
order. 

" | 16. Who is she that will set her 
hands to work to get three-pence a day, 
and may have at least twenty-pence a 
day to sleep an hour with a friar, a 
monk, or a priest? Who is he that 
would labour for a groat a day, and 
may have at least twelve-pence a day 
to be a bawd to a priest, a monk, or a 
friar ? 

" $ 31. Wherefore, if your grace will 
set their sturdy loobies abroad in the 
world, to get them wives of their own, 
to get their living with their labour, in 
the sweat of their faces, according to 
the commandment of G-od, Gen. iii., to 
give other idle people, by their example, 
occasion to go to labour ; tye these holy, 
idle thieves to the carts to be whipped 
naked about every market-town, till 
they will fall to labour, that they may, 
by their importunate begging, not take 
away the alms that the good Christian 
people would give unto us sore, impo- 
tent, miserable people your bedemen." 



454 



THE ANGLICAN CHUKCH, 



for the benefit of the crown, all monasteries with less than twelve 
inmates or possessing a revenue under £200 per annum. Three 
hundred and seventy-six houses were swept away by this act, and the 
" Court of Augmentations of the King's Revenue" was established to 
take charge of the lands and goods thus summarily escheated. The 
rents which thus fell to the king were valued at £32,000 a year, 
and the movable property at £100,000, while the commissioners 
were popularly supposed to have been "as careful to enrich them- 
selves as to increase the king's revenue." Stokesley, Bishop of 
London, remarked, concerning the transaction, that "these lesser 
houses were as thorns soon plucked up, but the great abbots were 
like putrefied old oaks, yet they must needs follow, and so would 
others do in Christendom before many years were passed." But 
Stokesley, however true a prophet in the general scope of his obser- 
vation, was mistaken as to the extreme facility of eradicating the 
humble thorns. The country was not as easily reconciled to the 
change as the versatile, more intelligent, and less reverent inhabi- 
tants of the cities. Henry, unluckily, not only had not abrogated 
Purgatory by proclamation, but had specially recommended the con- 
tinuance of prayers and masses for the dead, 1 and thousands were 
struck with dread as to the future prospects of themselves and their 
dearest kindred, when there should be few to offer the sacrifice of the 
mass for the benefit of departed souls. The traveller and the men- 
dicant, too, missed the ever open door and the coarse but abundant 
fare, which smoothed the path of the humble wayfarer. Discontent 
spread widely, and was soon manifested openly. To meet this, most 
of the lands were sold at a very moderate price to the neighboring 
gentry, under condition of exercising free hospitality, to supply the 
wants of those who had hitherto been dependent on conventual charity. 2 



1 Articles devised by the Kinges 
Highnes Majestie, ann. 1536 (Formu- 
laries of Faith, Oxford, 1856 p. xxxi.). 

2 Burnet I. 193-4, 222-4;— Pari. 
Hist. I. 526-7. To our modern notions, 
there is something inexpressibly dis- 
gusting in the openness with which 
bribes were tendered to Cromwell by 
those who were eager to obtain grants 
of abbey lands (Suppression of Monas- 
teries, passim). On the other hand, 
the abbots and abbesses who feared for 
their houses had as little scruple in 
offering him large sums for his protec- 



tion. Thus the good Bishop Latimer 
renders himself the intermediary (Dec. 
16th, 1536) of an offer from the Prior 
of Great Malvern of 500 marks to the 
king and 200 to Cromwell to preserve 
that foundation ; while the Abbot of 
Peterboro' tendered the enormous sum 
of 2500 marks to the king and £300 to 
Cromwell (Ibid. 150, 179). The liberal 
disposition of the latter seems to have 
made an impression, for, though he 
could not save his abbey, he was ap- 
pointed the first Bishop of Peterboro' 
— a see erected upon the ruins of the 
house. 



THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 



455 



The plan was only partially successful, and soon another element 
of trouble made itself apparent. Of the monks whose houses were 
suppressed, those who desired to continue a monastic life were trans- 
ferred to the larger foundations, while the rest took "capacities," 1 
under promise of a reasonable allowance for their journey home. 
They received only forty shillings and a gown, and with this slender 
provision it was estimated that about ten thousand were turned adrift 
upon the world, in which their previous life had incapacitated them 
from earning a support. The result is visible in the act for the pun- 
ishment of "sturdy vagabonds and beggars," passed by Parliament 
in this same year, inflicting a graduated scale of penalties, of which 
hanging was the one threatened for a third oifence. 2 

This was a dangerous addition to society when discontent was 
smouldering and ready to burst into flame. The result was soon 
apparent. After harvest-time great disturbances convulsed the king- 
dom. A rising, reported as consisting of twenty thousand men, in 
Lincolnshire, was put down by the Duke of Suffolk with a heavy 
force and free promises of pardon. In the North matters were even 
more serious. The clergy there were less tractable than their south- 
ern brethren, and some Injunctions savoring strongly of Protestant- 
ism aroused their susceptibilities afresh. Unwilling to submit without 
a struggle, they held a convocation, in which they denied the royal 
supremacy and proclaimed their obedience to the pope. This was 
rank rebellion, especially as Paul III., on the 30th of August, 1535, 
had issued his Bull of excommunication against Henry, and self- 
preservation therefore demanded the immediate suppression of the 
recalcitrants. They would hardly, indeed, have ventured on assum- 
ing a position of such dangerous opposition without the assurance 
of popular support, nor were their expectations or labors disappointed. 
The " Pilgrimage of Grace," according to report, soon numbered 
forty thousand men. Although Skipton and Scarboro' bravely re- 
sisted a desperate seige, the success of the insurgents at York, Hull, 
and Pomfret Castle was encouraging, and risings in Lancashire, Dur- 
ham, and Westmoreland gave to the insurrection an aspect of the 



1 "They be very pore, and can have 
lytyll serves withowtt ther capacytes. 
The bischoyppys and curettes be very 
hard to them, withowtt they have ther 
capacytes." — The Bishop of Dover to 
Cromwell, March 10th, 1538 (Suppres- 
sion of Monasteries, p. 193). These 
"capacities" empowered them to per- 



form the functions of secular priests. 
The good bishop pleads that certain 
poor monks may obtain them without 
paying the usual fee. 

2 27 Henry VIII. c. 25, renewed by 
28 Hen. VIII. c. 6.— Parliament. Hist. 
I. 574. 



456 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



most menacing character. Good fortune and skilful strategy, how- 
ever, saved the Duke of Norfolk and his little army from defeat; the 
winter was rapidly approaching, and at length a proclamation of gen- 
eral amnesty, issued by the king on the 9th of December, induced 
a dispersion of the rebels. The year 1537 saw another rising in the 
North, but this time it only numbered eight thousand men. Repulsed 
at Carlisle, and cut to pieces by Norfolk, the insurgents were quickly 
put down, and other disturbances of minor importance were even 
more readily suppressed. 1 

Strengthened by these triumphs over the disaffected, Henry pro- 
ceeded, in 1537, to make the acknowledgment of papal authority a 
crime liable to the penalties of a praemunire; 2 and, as resistance was 
no longer to be dreaded, he commenced to take possession of some 
of the larger houses. These did not come within the scope of the 
act of Parliament, and therefore were made the subject of special 
transactions. The abbots resigned, either from having been impli- 
cated in the late insurrections, or feeling that their evil lives would 
not bear investigation, or doubtless, in many cases, from a clear per- 
ception of the doom impending in the near future, which rendered it 
prudent to make the best terms possible while yet there was time. 
Thus, in these cases, the monks were generally pensioned with eight 
marks a year, while some of the abbots secured a revenue of 400 or 
500 marks. 3 In an agreement which has been preserved, the monks 
were to receive pensions varying from 53s. 4c?. to <£4 a year, accord- 
ing to their age. 4 In some cases, indeed, according to Bishop Lati- 
mer, in a sermon preached before Edward VI., the royal exchequer 
was relieved by finding preferment for most unworthy objects — 
" however bad the reports of them were, some were made bishops 
and others put into good dignities in the church; that so the king 
might save their pensions that otherwise were to be paid them." 5 
An effectual means, moreover, of inducing voluntary surrenders was 
by stopping their source of support, and thus starving them out. 
Richard, Bishop of Dover, one of the commissioners in Wales, writes 
to Cromwell, May 23d, 1538: "I thinke before the yere be owt 



1 Burnet I. 227-34; Collect. 160.— 
Wilkins III. 784, 792, 812.— Kymer 
XIV. 549. 

2 28 Henry VIII. c. 10.— Pari. Hist. 
I. 533. 

3 Burnet I. 235-7. These pensions 
were not in all cases secured without 



difficulty, even after promises had been 
made and agreements entered into 
(Suppression of Monasteries, p. 126). 

4 Suppression of Monasteries, p. 170. 
— Strype's Eccles. Memor. I. 262. 

5 Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, 
Book i. Chap. ix. 



DESTRUCTION OF THE MONASTIC SYSTEM. 



457 



ther schall be very fewe howsis abill to lyve, but scball be glade to 
giffe up their howseis and provide for them selvys otherwise, for their 
thei schall have no living." In anticipation of the impending doom, 
many of the abbots and priors had sold everything that was salable, 
from lands and leases down to spits and kitchen utensils, leaving 
their houses completely denuded. The letters of the commissioners 
are full of complaints respecting this sharp practice, and of their 
efforts to trace the property. Another mode of compelling sur- 
renders was by threatening the strict enforcement of the rules of the 
order. Thus, in the official report of the surrender of the Austin 
friars of Gloucester, we find the alternative given them, when "the 
seyd freeres seyed ... as the worlde ys nowe they war not abull 
to kepe them and leffe in ther howseys, wherfore voluntaryly they 
gaffe ther howseys into the vesytores handes to the kynges use. The 
vesytor seyd to them, Hhynke nott, nor hereafter reportt nott, that 
ye be suppresseyd, for I have noo such auctoryte to suppresse yow, 
but only to reforme yow, wherfor yf ye woll be reformeyd, accor- 
deyng to good order, ye may contynew for all me.' They seyd they 
war nott abull to contynew," whereupon they were ejected. 1 

In the year 1538 the work proceeded with increased rapidity, no 
less than 158 surrenders of the larger houses being enrolled. Many 
of the abbots were attainted of treason and executed, and the abbey 
lands forfeited. Means not of the nicest kind were taken to increase 
the disrepute of the monastic orders, and they retaliated in the same 
way. Thus, the Abbot of Crossed-Friars, in London, was surprised 
in the day time with a woman Under the worst possible circumstances, 
giving rise to a lawsuit more curious than decent ; 2 while, on the other 
hand, the Abbess of Chepstow accused Dr. London, one of the vis- 
itors, of corrupting her nuns. 3 Public opinion, however, did not 



1 Suppression of Monast. pp. 194, 
203. 

2 A letter from John Bartelot to 
Cromwell shows that the abbot pur- 
chased secrecy by distributing thirty 
pounds to those who detected him, and 
promising them thirty more. This 
latter sum was subsequently reduced to 
six pounds, for which the holy man 
gave his note. This not being paid at 
maturity, he was sued, when he had 
the audacity to complain to Cromwell, 
and to threaten to prosecute the in- 
truders for robbery and force them to 
return the money paid. Bartelot relates 



his share in the somewhat questionable 
transaction with great naivete, and 
applies to Cromwell for protection. — 
Suppression of Monasteries, Letter xxv. 

3 This may have been true, for Dr. 
London was one of the miserable tools 
who are the fitting representatives of 
the time. His desire to discover the 
irregularities of the monastic orders arose 
from no reverence for virtue, for he 
underwent public penance at Oxford 
for adultery with a mother and daughter 
(Strype, Eccles. Memor. I. 376) ; and 
his zeal in suppressing the monasteries 
was complemented with equal zeal in 



458 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



move fast enough for the rapacity of those in power, and strenuous 
exertions were made to stimulate it. All the foul stories that could 
be found or invented respecting the abbeys were raked together ; but 
these proving insufficient, the impostures concerning relics and images 
were investigated with great success, and many singular exposures 
were made which gave the king fresh warrant for his arbitrary mea- 
sures, and placed the religious houses in a more defenceless position 
than ever. 1 

Despite all this, in the session of 1539 all the twenty-eight par- 
liamentary abbots had their writs, and no less than twenty sat in the 
House of Lords. 2 Yet the influence of the court and the progress 
of public opinion were shown in an act which confirmed the sup- 
pressions of the larger houses not embraced in the former act, as 
well as all that might thereafter be suppressed, forfeited, or resigned, 3 
and May 9th, 1540, by special enactment, the ancient order of the 
Knights of St. John was broken up, pensions being granted to the 
grand prior and some of the principal dignitaries. 4 These measures 
consummated the ruin of the monastic system in England. Hence- 



persecuting Protestants. In 1543 lie 
inade himself conspicuous, in conjunc- 
tion with Gardiner, by having heretics 
burned under the provisions of the Six 
Articles. His eagerness in this good 
work led him to commit perjury, on 
conviction of which he was pilloried in 
Windsor, Heading, and Newbury, and 
thrust into the Fleet, where he died. 
— Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, Book 
I. Chap. 26, 27. 

In fact, Henry's capricious despotism 
rendered it almost impossible that he 
could be served by men of self-respect 
and honor. 

1 Burnet I. 238-43. — See also 
Froude's Hist. Engl. III. 285 et seq. 
During his visitation (Aug. 27th, 1538), 
the Bishop of Dover writes to Crom- 
well, "I have Malkow's ere that Peter 
stroke of, as yt ys wrytyn, and a M. as 
trewe as that" (Suppression of Mon- 
asteries, p. 212). In a report of Dec. 
28th, 1538, Dr. London observes, with 
dry humor, "I have dyvers other pro- 
pre thinges, as two heddes of seynt 
Ursula, wich bycause ther ys no maner 
of sylver abowt them, I reserve tyll I 
have another hedd of herse, wich I 
schall fynd in my waye within theese 
xiiii. days, as I am creadably in- 
formyd" (Ibid. p. 234). Dr. Leighton 
writes in the same spirit to Cromwell — 



" Yee shall also receive a Bag of Kelicks 
wherein ye shall see Stranger Things as 
shall appear by the Scripture. As God's 
Coat, or Ladie's Smock ; Part of God's 
Supper, In ccena Domini ; Pars petrae 
super qua natus erat Jesus in Bethlehem. 
Besides there is in Bethlehem plenty 
of Stones and sometimes Quarries, and 
maketh their mangers of Stone. The 
scripture of every thing shall declare 
you all. And all these of Mayden 
Bradley. "Where is a holy Father 
Prior ; and hath but six Sons and one 
Daughter married yet of the goods of 
the Monastery. And he thanketh God, 
he never meddled with married women ; 
but all with Maidens, the fairest could 
be gotten. And always married them 
right well. The Pope, considering his 
fragility, gave him license to keep a 

w : and hath good writing, sub 

Plumbo, to discharge his conscience " 
(Strype, Eccles. Memor. I. 253). — 
Nicander Nucius (op. cit. pp. 51-62) 
relates some of the stories current at 
the time of the miracles engineered by 
the monks to stave off their impending 
doom. 

2 Pari. Hist. I. 535. 

3 31 Henry VIII. c. 13 (Pari. Hist. 
I. 537). 

4 32 Hen. VIII. c. 24 (Ibid. 543-44). 



DESTRUCTION OF THE MONASTIC SYSTE 



459 



forth it was altogether at the king's mercy, and his character was 
not one to temper power with moderation. In 1539 there are upon 
record fifty-seven surrenders of the great abbeys, 1 and a large num- 
ber in 1540, the good house of Godstow being the last of the great 
monasteries to fall. Of the old monastic system this left only the 
chantries, free chapels, collegiate churches, hospitals, &c, which were 
gradually absorbed during the succeeding years ; 2 until the necessities 
of the king prompted a sweeping measure for their destruction. Ac- 
cordingly in 1545 a bill was brought in placing them all at his dis- 
position. There were some indications of opposition, but the king 
pleaded the expenditures of the French and Scottish wars, and sol- 
emnly promised his Parliament "that all should be done for the 
glory of God and common profit of the realm," whereupon it was 
passed. 3 It is computed that the number of monasteries suppressed 
by these various measures was 645; of colleges, 90; of chantries 
and free chapels, 2874 ; and of hospitals, HO. 4 

A vast amount of property thus passed into the hands of the court. 
The clear yearly rental of the suppressed houses alone was rated at 
,£131,607 6s. 4d. — an immense sum in those days; but Burnet 
states that in reality it was almost tenfold the amount. 5 Small as 
may have been the good effected by these enormous possessions in 
the hands of the monks, it was even more worthless under the man- 
agement of its new masters. Henry admitted the heavy responsi- 
bility which he assumed in thus seizing the wealth which had been 
dedicated to pious uses, and he entertained magnificent schemes for 
devoting it to the public benefit, but his own necessities and the 
grasping avarice of needy courtiers wrought out a result ridiculously 
mean. Thus he designed to set aside a rental of .£18,000 for the 
support of eighteen " Byshopprychys to be new made." 6 For this 
purpose he obtained full power from Parliament in 1539, 7 and in 
1540 he established one on the remains of the Abbey of Westminster. 



1 Burnet I. 262-3. 

2 Kymer XIV., XV. 

3 37 Hen. VIII. c. 4 (Pari. Hist. I. 
561). 

4 Pari. Hist. I. 537. Such hospi- 
tals, chantries, &c, as were spared by 
Henry VIII. were speedily swept 
away, as soon as Edward VI. suc- 
ceeded to the throne, by the act 1 Edw. 
VI. c. 14 (Pari. Hist. I. 583). 

5 This may readily be considered no 



exaggeration. A letter from John 
Freeman to Cromwell values at £80,000 
the lead alone stripped from the dis- 
mantled houses (Suppression of Monas- 
teries, p. 290). 

6 Such is the substance of a memo- 
randum in Henry's own hand- writing 
(Suppression of Monasteries, No. 131, 
p. 263). 

7 31 Hen. VIII. c. 9 (Pari. Hist. I. 
540). 



460 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 

Those of Chester, Gloucester, and Peterboro' were established in 
1541, and in 1543 those of Oxford and Bristol, 1 and one of them, 
that of Westminster, was suppressed in 1550, leaving only five as 
the result. The people were quieted by assurances that taxes would 
be abrogated forever and the kingdom kept in a most efficient state 
of defence ; but subsidies and benevolences were immediately exacted 
with more frequency and energy than ever. 2 Splendid foundations 
were promised for institutions of learning, but little was given; a 
moderate sum was expended in improving the sea-ports, while broad 
manors and rich farms were granted to favorites at almost nominal 
prices; and the ill-gotten wealth abstracted from the church disap- 
peared without leaving traces except in the sudden and overgrown 
fortunes of those gentlemen who were fortunate or prompt enough 
to make use of the golden opportunity, and who to obtain them had 
no scruple in openly tendering bribes and shares in the spoil to 
Cromwell, the omnipotent favorite of the king. 3 The complaints of 
the people, who found their new masters harder than the old, may 
be estimated from some specimens printed by Strype.* 

If it be asked what became of the "holy idle thieves" and "sturdy 
loobies " whom the Beggars' Petition so earnestly desired to be thrown 
upon the world, the answer may be found in the legislation of Edward 
VI. A poor-law, the commencement of a series which to this day 
has pressed upon England with ever-increasing weight, was enacted 
in 1552. 5 This tells its own story, but even more suggestive was 
another bill for the suppression of vagabondage, the provisions of 
which mark not only the inhumanity of the age, but the magnitude 
of the evil caused by the violent acts of Henry. Every able-bodied 
man loitering in any place for three days without working or offering 
to work was held to be a vagabond. He was thereupon to be branded 
on the breast with a letter V, and adjudged as a slave for two years 
to any one who might bring him for that purpose before a justice 
of the peace. 6 Such was the ignominious end of the powerful and 
wealthy monastic orders of England. 

1 Burnet I. 300. 

2 Strype, Eccles. Memor. I. 345. 

3 See letters of the Lord Chancellor 
Audley and the learned Sir Thomas 
Elyot to Cromwell. — Strype, Eccles. 
Memor. I. 263-5. 

4 Op. cit. I. 392-403 ; II. 258-63. 

5 5-6 Edw. VI. c. 2 (Pari. Hist. I. 
596). 



e 1 Edw. VI. c. 3— Pari. Hist. I. 583. 
—Burnet II. 45. In 1538 the Bishop 
of Dover interceded with Cromwell for 
licenses to enable some ejected friars to 
abandon their monastic gowns, " For 
off trewthe ther harttes be clene from 
the rely gy on the more parte, so they 
myght change ther cotes, the whyche 
they be not abull to paye for, for they 
have no thenge " (Suppression of Mon- 
asteries, p. 197J. 



SACERDOTAL CELIBACY RETAINED. 



461 



The monastic establishments of Ireland shared the same fate. 
Rymer 1 gives the text of a commission for the suppression of a nun- 
nery of the diocese of Dublin, in 1535. The insubordination of the 
island, however, rendered it difficult to carry out the measure every- 
where, and finally, in 1541, it was accomplished by virtually granting 
their lands to the native chieftains. These were good Catholics, but 
they could not resist the temptation. They joined eagerly in grasp- 
ing the spoil, and the desirable political object was effected of detach- 
ing them, for the time, from the foreign alliances with the Catholic 
powers which threatened serious evils. 2 

It is a striking proof of Henry's strength of will and intense in- 
dividuality of character, that, in thus tearing up by the roots the 
whole system of monachism, he did not yield one jot to the powerful 
section of his supporters who had pledged themselves to the logical 
sequence of his acts, the abrogation of sacerdotal celibacy in general. 
While every reason of policy and statesmanship urged him to grant 
the privilege of marriage to the secular clergy, whom he forced to 
transfer to him the allegiance formerly rendered to Rome ; while his 
chief religious advisers at home and his Protestant allies abroad used 
every endeavor to wring from him this concession, he steadily and 
persistently refused it to the end, and we can only guess whether his 
firmness arose from conscientious conviction or from the pride of a 
controversialist. 

Notwithstanding his immovable resolution on this point, his power 
seemed ineffectual to stay the progress of the new ideas. An assem- 
bly held by his order in May, 1530, to condemn the heretical doc- 
trines disseminated in certain books, shows how openly the advocates 
of clerical marriage had promulgated their views while yet Wolsey 
was prime minister and Henry gloried in the title of Defender of the 
Faith. Numerous books were denounced in which celibacy was ridi- 
culed, its sanctity disproved, and its evil influences commented upon 
in the most irreverent manner. 3 These doctrines were sometimes 



1 Ecedera, T. XIV. p. 551. 

2 Eroude, Hist. Engl. IV. 543. 

3 Thus "An Exposition into the 
sevenkh Chapitre of the firste Epistle 
to the Corinthians " seems to have been 
almost entirely devoted to an argument 
against celibacy, adducing all manner 
of reasons derived from nature, morality, 
necessity, and Scripture, and describing 



forcibly the evils arising from the rule. 
The author does not hesitate to declare 
that u Matrimony is as golde, the spirit- 
uall estates as dung," and the tenor of 
his writings may be understood from 
his triumphant exclamation, after in- 
sisting that all the Apostles and their 
immediate successors were married — 
" Seeing that ye chose not married men 
to bishoppes, other Criste must be a 



462 



THE ANGLICAN CHUECH 



carried into practice, and the orthodox clergy had little ceremony in 
visiting them with the sharpest penalties of the canons. It was 
about this time that Stokesley, Bishop of London, condemned to 
imprisonment for life Thomas Patmore, the incumbent of Hadham 
in Hertfordshire, for encouraging his curate to marry and permitting 
him subsequently to officiate ; and the unfortunate man actually lay 
for three years in gaol, until released by the intercession of Cranmer. 1 
This severity offers a significant contrast to the lenity which punished 
priestly incontinence with trifling fines and penalties, or sold licenses 
to sin almost openly. 2 

If the reforming polemics were thus bold while Henry was yet 
orthodoxy it may readily be imagined how keenly they watched the 
progress of his quarrel with the pope, and how loud became their 
utterances as he gradually threw off his allegiance to Rome and per- 
secuted all who hesitated to follow in his footsteps. He soon showed, 
however, that he allowed none to precede him, and that all consci- 
ences were to be measured by the royal ell-wand. Thus his proceed- 
ings against the Carthusians and Franciscans in 1534 were varied 
by a proclamation directed against seditious books and priestly mar- 
riages. As we have seen, some unions had taken place, and all who 
had committed the indiscretion were deprived of their functions and 
reduced to the laity, though the marriages seem to have been recog- 
nized as valid. Future transgressions, moreover, were threatened 
with the royal indignation and further punishment — words of serious 
import at such a time and under such a monarch. 3 



foole or unrighteous which so did chose, 
or you anticristis and deceyvers." 

The "Sum of Scripture" was more 
moderate in its expressions. " Yf a 
man vowe to lyve chaste and in po- 
vertie in a monasterie, than yf he per- 
ceyve that in the monastery he ly veth 
woorse than he did before, as in forni- 
cation and theft, then he may leve the 
cloyster and breke his vowe without 
synne." 

Tyndale in " The Obedience of a 
Cristen Man " is most uncompromising. 
' ' Oportet presby terem ducere uxorem 
duas ob causas." . . . "If thou bind 
thy self to chastitie to obteyn that which 
Criste purchesed for the, surely soo art 
thow an inndele." 

The " Kevelation of Anticriste" car- 
ries the war into the enemy's terri- 
tory in a fashion somewhat savage. 
" Keping of virginitie and chastite of 



religion is a devellishe thinge" ("Wil- 
kins III. 728-34). 

1 Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, 
Book in. Chapter 34. 

2 For instances of these practices, see 
Eroude's England, Ch. in. 

3 Wilkins III. 778.— Strype, in his 
" Memorials of Cranmer," Bk. i. Chap. 
18, gives this proclamation as dated 
Nov. 16, in the 30th year of Henry 
VIII. which would place it in 1538, 
and Bishop "Wilkins also prints (III. 
696) from Harmer's "Specimen of 
Errors " the same with unimportant 
variations, as "given this 16th day of 
November, in the 13th year of our 
reign," which would place it in 1521. 
It is impossible, however, at a time when 
even the Lutherans of Saxony had 
scarcely ventured on the innovation, 



PEOGRESS OF CLERICAL MARRIAGE, 



463 



In spite of all this, the chief advisers of Henry did not scruple to 
connive at infractions of the proclamation. Both Cranmer and 
Cromwell favored the Reformation ; the former was himself secretly 
married, and even ventured to urge the king to reconsider his views 
on priestly celibacy ;* while the latter, though, as a layman, without 
any such personal motive, was disposed to relax the strictness of the 
rule of celibacy. During the visitation of the monasteries, for in- 
stance, the Abbot of Walden had little hesitation in confessing to 
Ap Rice, the visitor, that he was secretly married, and asked to be 
secured from molestation. The confidence thus manifested in the 
friendly disposition of the vicar-general was satisfactorily responded 
to. Cromwell replied, merely warning him to u use his remedy" 
without, if possible, causing scandal. 2 A singular petition, addressed 
to him in 1536 by the secular clergy of the diocese of Bangor, illus- 
trates forcibly both the confidence felt in his intentions, and the 
necessity of the Abbot of Walden's " remedy" in the fearful state of 
immorality which prevailed. There had been a visitation in which 
the petitioners admit that many of them had been found in fault, 
and as their women had been consequently taken away, they pray 
the vicar-general to devise some means by which their consorts may 
be restored. They do not venture to ask directly for marriage, but 
decency forbids the supposition that they could openly request Crom- 
well to authorize a system of concubinage. Nothing can be more 



that in England priestly marriage could 
already have become as common as the 
proclamation shows it to be. The bull 
of Leo X., thanking Henry for his refu- 
tation of Luther, was dated JSTov. 4th, 
1521, and we may be sure that the 
king's zeal for the faith would at such 
a moment have prompted him to much 
more stringent measures of repression, 
if he had ventured, at that epoch, to 
invade the sacred precincts of ecclesi- 
astical jurisdiction — a thing he would 
have been by no means likely to do. 
The date of 1521 is therefore evidently 
an error. 

For the same reasons I have been 
forced to reject a discussion in convoca- 
tion of the same year (Wilkins III. 
697), in which the question of sacerdo- 
tal marriage was decided triumphantly 
in the affirmative. The proceedings 
are evidently those of Dec. 1547, in the 
first year of Edward YI. 

1 Burnet's Collections I. 319. 



2 MS. State Paper Office (Eroude, 
III. 65). Ap Eice's report to Crom- 
well is sufficiently suggestive as to the 
interior life of the monastic orders to 
deserve transcription. " As we were 
of late at Walden, the abbot there 
being a man of good learning and right 
sincere judgment, as I examined him 
alone, showed me secretly, upon stipu- 
lation of silence, but only unto you as 
our judge, that he had contracted 
matrimony with a certain woman se- 
cretly, having present thereat but one 
trusty witness; because he, not being 
able, as he said, to contain, though he 
could not be suffered by the laws of 
man, saw he might do it lawfully by 
the laws of God ; and for the avoiding 
of more inconvenience, which before 
he was provoked unto, he did thus, 
having confidence in you that this act 
should not be anything prejudicial unto 
him." 



464 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 



humiliating than their confession of the relations existing between 
themselves, as ministers of Christ, and the flocks entrusted to their 
spiritual care. After pleading that without women they cannot keep 
house and exercise hospitality, they add: "We ourselves shall be 
driven to seek our living at ale-houses and taverns, for mansions 
upon the benefices and vicarages we have none. And as for gentle- 
men and substantial honest men, for fear of inconvenience, Tcnoiving 
our frailty and accustomed liberty, they will in noivise board us in 
their houses." 1 

The tendencies thus exhibited by the king's advisers called forth 
the remonstrances of the conservatives. In June, 1536, the lower 
house of convocation presented a memorial inveighing strongly against 
the progress of heresy, and among the obnoxious opinions condemned 
was " That it is preached and taught that all things awght to be in 
comen and that Priests shuld have wiffes," and they added that 
books containing heretical opinions were printed "cum privilegio," 
were openly sold among the people, and were not condemned by 
those in authority. 2 Possibly it was in consequence of this that in 
the following November Henry issued a circular letter to his bishops 
in which he commanded them — "Whereas we be advertised that di- 
vers Priests have presumed to marry themselves contrary to the 
custom of our Church of England, Our Pleasure is, Ye shall make 
secret enquiry within your Diocess, whether there be any such resi- 
ant within the same or not " — and any such offenders who had pre- 
sumed to continue the performance of their sacred functions were 
ordered to be reported to him or to be arrested and sent to London. 3 
Curiously enough, there is no reference to the subject in the "Articles 
devised bytheKinges Highnes Majestieto stablyshe Christen Quiet- 
nes and Unitie amonge us," issued by Henry in this year/ 

Notwithstanding the ominous threat in the letter to the Bishops 



1 MS. State Paper Office (Froude, 
III. 372). It is not to be assumed, 
however, that the clergy were worse 
than the laity. During the visitation 
of the monasteries, Thomas Leigh, one 
of the visitors, says, in writing to Crom- 
well Aug. 22, 1536, concerning the re- 
gion between Coventry and Chester 
" For certain of the knights and gen- 
tlemen, and most commonly all, liveth 
so incontinently, having their concu- 
bines openly in their houses, with five 
or six of their children, and putting 
from them their wives, that all the 



country therewith be not a little of- 
fended, and taketh evil example of 
them" (Miscellaneous State Papers, 
London, 1778, I. 21). It perhaps 
would not be easy to determine the 
exact responsibility of the clergy for 
this immorality of their flocks. 

2 Strype, Eccles. Memorials, Yol. I. 
Append, p. 176. 

3 Burnet's Collect. I. 362. 

4 Formularies of Faith, Oxford, 1856. 
— Wilkins III. 826. 



UNCERTAINTY AS TO MARRIAGE. 465 

there appears, about this period, to have been great uncertainty in 
the public mind respecting the state of the law and the king's inten- 
tions. Two letters happen to have been preserved, written within a 
few days of each other, in June, 1537, to Cromwell, which reveal 
the condition of opinion at the time. One of these complains that 
the vicar of Mendelsham, in Suffolk, has brought home a wife and 
children, whom he claims to be lawfully his own, and that it is per- 
mitted by the king. Although "thys acte by hym done is in thys 
countre a monstre, and many do growdge at it," yet, not knowing 
the king's pleasure, no proceedings can be had, and appeal is there- 
fore made for authority to prosecute, lest " hys ensample wnponnyched 
shall be occasion for other carnall evyll dysposed prestes to do in 
lyke manner." The other letter is from an unfortunate priest who 
had recently married, supposing it to be lawful. The "noyse of the 
peopull," however, had just informed him that a royal order had 
commanded the separation of such unions, and he had at once sent 
his wife to her friends, threescore miles away. He therefore hastens 
to make his peace, protesting that he had sinned through ignorance, 
though he makes bold to argue that "yf the kyngys grace could have 
founde yt laufull that prestys mught have byn maryd, they wold 
have byn to the crowne dubbyll and dubbyll faythefull ; furste in 
love, secondly for fere that the byschoppe of Rome schuld sette yn 
hys powre unto ther desolacyon." 1 

It is evident from these letters that there was still a genuine pop- 
ular antipathy to clerical marriage, and yet that the royal supremacy 
was so firmly established by Henry's ruthless persecutions that this 
antipathy was held subject to the pleasure of the court, and could at 
any moment have been dissipated by proclamation. In fact, the only 
wonder is that any Convictions remained in the minds of those who 
had seen the objects of their profoundest veneration made the sport 
of avarice and derision. Stately churches torn to pieces, the stone 
sold to sacrilegious builders, the lead put up at auction to the highest 
bidder, the consecrated bells cast into cannon, the sacred vessels 
melted down, the holy relics snatched from the shrines and treated 
as old bones and offal, the venerated images burned at Smithfield — 
all this could have left little sentiment of respect for worn-out religi- 
ous observances in those who watched and saw the sacrilege remain 
unpunished. 

1 Suppression of Monasteries, pp. 160-1. 
30 



466 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



Notwithstanding the reforming influences with which he was sur- 
rounded, Henry sternly adhered to the position which he had assumed. 1 
When, in 1538, the princes of the Schmalkaldic League offered to 
place him at its head, and even to alter, if possible, the Augsburg 
Confession so as to make it a common basis of union for all the ele- 
ments of opposition to Rome, Henry was well inclined to obtain the 
political advantages of the position tendered him, but hesitated to 
accept it until all doctrinal questions should be settled. The three 
points on which the Germans insisted were the communion in both 
elements, the worship in the vulgar tongue, and the marriage of the 
clergy. In the Convocation of that year a series of questions was 
submitted for decision embracing the contested points, and the clergy 
decided in favor of celibacy, private masses, and communion in one 
element. 2 Thus sustained, Henry was firm, and the ambassadors of 
the League spent two months in conferences with the English bishops 
and doctors without result. On their departure (August 5th, 1538), 
they addressed him a letter arguing the subjects in debate — the 
refusal of the cup, private masses, and sacerdotal celibacy — to which 
Henry replied at some length, defending his position on these topics 
with no little skill and dexterity, and refusing his assent finally. 3 
The reformers, however, did not yet despair, and the royal preachers 
even ventured occasionally to debate the propriety of clerical mar- 
riage freely before him in their sermons, but in vain. 4 An epistle 
which Melanchthon addressed him in April, 1539, arguing the same 
questions again, had no better effect. 5 

In the spring of 1539 Henry renewed negotiations with the Ger- 
man princes, and his envoys in soliciting another visit from deputies 
of the League held out some vague promises of his yielding on the 
point of celibacy. The Germans in turn, to show their earnest desire 
for union with England, submitted a series of propositions, in which 
they suggested that the marriage of priests might be left to the dis- 
cretion of the pope, and that if it were to be prohibited only persons 



i He made one exception. Nuns 
professed before the age of 21 were at 
liberty to marry after the dissolution of 
their houses, whereat, according to Dr. 
London, they "be wonderfull gladde 
. . . and do pray right hartely for the 
kinges majestie ' ' (Suppression of Mon- 
asteries, p. 214). 

2 Strype's Eccles. Memor. I. 320. 



3 Burnet I. 254-55; Collect. 332, 
347. 

4 " Nothing has yet been settled con- 
cerning the marriage of the clergy, al- 
though some persons have very freely 
preached before the king upon the sub- 
ject." — John Butler to Conrad Pellican 
(Froude III. 381). 

5 Burnet, Collect. I. 329. 



THE SIX AETICLES, 



467 



advanced in life should be ordained. 1 Both parties, however, were 
too firmly set in their opinions for accord to be possible. Notwith- 
standing any seeming hesitation caused by the policy of the moment, 
Henry's mind was fully made up, and the consequences of endeavor- 
ing to persuade him against his prejudices soon became apparent. 
Even while the negotiations were in progress he had issued a series 
of injunctions degrading from the priesthood all married clergy, and 
threatening with imprisonment and his displeasure all who should 
thereafter marry. 2 Argumentation confirmed his opinions, and he 
proceeded to enforce them on his subjects in his own savage manner, 
"for though on all other points he had set up the doctrines of the 
Augsburg Confession," yet on these he had committed himself as a 
controversialist, and the worst passions of polemical authorship — 
the true "odium theologicum" — acting through his irresponsible 
despotism, rendered him the cruellest of persecutors. But a few 
weeks after receiving the letter of Melanchthon, he answered it in 
cruel fashion. 

In May a new parliament met, chosen under great excitement, for 
the people were inflamed on the subject of religion, and animosities 
ran high. The principal object of the session was known to be a 
settlement of the national church, and as the reformers were in a 
minority against the court, the temper of the Houses was not likely 
to be encouraging for them. 3 On the 5th of May, a week after its 
assembling, a committee was appointed, at the king's request, to take 
into consideration the differences of religious opinion. On the 16th, 
the Duke of Norfolk, who was not a member of the committee, 
reported that no agreement could be arrived at, and he therefore 
laid before the House of Lords, for full discussion, articles em- 
bracing — 1st. Transsubstantiation ; 2d. Communion in both kinds; 
3d. Vows of Chastity; 4th. Private Masses; 5th. Sacerdotal Mar- 
riages; and 6th. Auricular Confession. Cranmer opposed them 
stoutly, arguing against them for three days, and especially endeavor- 
ing to controvert the third and fifth, which enjoined celibacy, but his 
efforts and those of his friends were vain, when pitted against the 
known wishes of the king, who himself took an active part in the 



1 Strype's Eccles. 
343. 



Memor. I. 339, 



2 Strype's Eccles. Memor. I. 344. — 
Wilkins III. 847. 

3 Yet the moderate party ventured to 
submit to parliament "A Device for 



extirpating Heresies among the People, ' ' 
among the suggestions of which was a 
bill for abolishing ecclesiastical celibacy, 
legalizing all existing marriages, and 
permitting the clergy in general ' ' to 
have wives and work for their living" 
—Rolls House MS. (Froude III. 381). 



468 



THE ANGLICAN CHUECH, 



debate, and argued in favor of the articles with much vigor. Under 
such circumstances, the adoption of the Six Articles was a foregone 
conclusion. On the 30th of May the chancellor reported that the 
House had agreed upon them, and that it was the king's pleasure 
"that some penal statute should be enacted to compel all his subjects 
who were in any way dissenters or contradicters of these articles to 
obey them." The framing of such a bill was intrusted to two com- 
mittees, one under the lead of Cranmer, the other under that of the 
Archbishop of York, and they were instructed to lay their respective 
plans before the king within forty-eight hours. Of course the report 
of the Archbishop of York was adopted. Introduced on the 7th of 
June, Cranmer again resisted it gallantly, but it passed both Houses 
by the 14th, and received the royal assent on the 28th. It was 
entitled "An Act for abolishing Diversity of Opinions in certain 
Articles concerning Christian Religion," and it stands as a monu- 
ment of the cruel legislation of a barbarous age. The Third Article 
was "that Priests after the order of Priesthood might not marry by 
the Law of God;" the Fourth, "that Vows of Chastity ought to be 
observed by the Law of God," and those who obstinately preached 
or disputed against them were adjudged felons, to suffer death without 
benefit of clergy. Any opposition, either in word or writing, sub- 
jected the offender to imprisonment during the king's pleasure, and 
a repetition of the offence constituted a felony, to be expiated with 
the life of the culprit. Priestly marriages were declared void, and 
a priest persisting in living with his wife was to be executed as a 
felon. Concubinage was punishable with deprivation of benefice and 
property, and imprisonment, for a first offence ; a second lapse was 
visited with a felon's death, while in all cases the wife or concubine 
shared the fate of her partner in guilt. Quarterly sessions were pro- 
vided, to be held by the bishops and other commissioners appointed 
by the king, for the purpose of enforcing these laws, and the accused 
were entitled to trial by jury. 1 Vows of chastity were only binding 



i Burnet I. 258-9.— 31 Henry VIII. 
c. xiv. Mr. Froude endeavors to re- 
lieve Henry of the responsibility of this 
measure, and quotes Melanchthon to 
show that its cruelty is attributable to 
Gardiner (Hist. Engl. III. 395). He 
admits, however, that the bill as passed 
differs but slightly from that presented 
by the king himself, with whom the 
committee which framed it must have 
acted in concert. According to Strype, 



" The Parliament men said little against 
this bill, but seemed all unanimous for 
it ; neither did the Lord Chancellor 
Audley, no, nor the Lord Privy Seal, 
Cromwel, speak against it : the reason 
being, no question, because they saw 
the king so resolved upon it. . . . Nay, 
at the very same time it passed, he 
(Cranmer) stayed and protested against 
it, though the king desired him to go 
out, since he could not consent to it. 



THE SIX ARTICLES. 



469 



on those who had taken them of their own free will when over twenty- 
one years of age. 1 According to the Act, the wives of priests were 
to be put away by June 24th, but on that day, as the act was not 
yet signed, an order was mercifully made extending the time to 
July 12th. 2 

Cranmer argued, reasonably enough, that it was a great hardship, 
in the case of the ejected monks, to insist on the observance of the 
vow of chastity, when those of poverty and obedience were dispensed 
with, and when the unfortunates had been forcibly deprived of all 
the advantages, safeguards, and protection of monastic life. 3 The 
matter, however, was not decided by reason, but by the whimsical 
perversity of a self-opinionated man, who, unfortunately, had the 
power to condense his polemical notions in the blood of his subjects. 

To comprehend the full iniquity of this savage measure we must 
remember the rapid progress which the new opinions had been 
making in England for twenty years ; the tacit encouragement given 
them by the suppression of the religious houses, and by the influence 
of the king's confidential advisers; and the hopes naturally excited 
by Henry's quarrel with Rome and negotiations with the League of 
Schmalkalden. In spite, therefore, of the comparatively mild pun- 
ishments hitherto imposed on priestly marriage, which were no doubt 
practically almost obsolete, such unions may safely be assumed as 
numerous. Even Cranmer himself, the primate of Henry's church, 
was twice married, his second wife, then living, the niece of Osiander, 



"Worcester (Latimer) also, as well as 
Sarum (Shaxton), was committed to 
prison ; and he, as well as the other, 
resigned up his bishopric upon the act " 
— (Memorials of Cranmer, Book I. 
Chap. 19). This shows us how the 
royal influence was used. Cranmer, 
indeed, in his reply to the Devonshire 
rebels, when in 1549 they demanded 
the restoration of the Six Articles, ex- 
pressly asserts " that if the king's 
majesty himself had not come person- 
ally into the Parliament house, those 
lawes had never passed" (Ibid. App. 
No. XL.). 

1 31 Henry VIII. c. 6 (Pari. Hist. 
I. 536-40). 

2 Pari. Hist. I. 540. 

There is a story current that soon 
after the passage of the Act, the Duke 
of Norfolk, who had had so much to do 
with it, on meeting a former chaplain 
of his named Lawney, jocularly said to 



him " O, my Lawney (knowing him of 
old much to favor priests' matrimony), 
whether may priests now have wives or 
no ?" " If it please your grace," replied 
he, "I cannot well tell whether priests 
may have wives or no ; but well I wot, 
and am sure of it, for all your act, that 
wives will have priests." — Strype's 
Memorials of Cranmer, Book I. Chap, 
viii. 

3 Dr. London chronicles the troubles 
of this class. " I perceyve many of 
the other sortt, monkes and chanons, 
whiche be yonge lustie men, allways 
fatt fedde, lyving in ydelnes and at 
rest, be sore perplexide that now being 
prestes they may nott retorn and 
marye " (Suppression of Monasteries, p. 
215). 

Nicander Nucius asserts that many 
did marry openly — aXlovg tie yvvalKag 
ivvdfiuQ awevvovg elaayojuivovg " (Op. cit. 
p. 71). 



470 



THE ANGLICAN CHUKCH 



being kept under a decent veil of secrecy in his palace. 1 When, 
after his fruitless resistance to the Six Articles, the bill was passed, 
he sent his wife to her friends in Germany, until the death of his 
master enabled him to bring her back and acknowledge her openly ; 2 
but vast numbers of unfortunate pastors could not have had the 
opportunity, and perhaps lacked the self-control, thus to arrange 
their domestic affairs. Even the gentle Melanchthon was moved 
from his ordinary equanimity, and ventured to address to his royal 
correspondent a remonstrance expressing his horror of the cruelty 
which could condemn to the scaffold a man whose sole guilt consisted 
in not abandoning the wife to whom he had promised fidelity through 
good and evil, before God and man — a cruelty which could find no 
precedent in any code that man had previously dared to frame. 3 

As might be expected, numerous divorces of married priests fol- 
lowed this Draconian legislation, and these divorces were held good 
by the act of 1549, which, under Edward VI., granted full liberty 
in the premises to ecclesiastics. 4 Even Henry, however, began to 
feel that he had gone too far, and the influence of Cromwell was 
sufficient to prevent the harshest features of the law from being en- 
forced in all their odious severity, especially as the projected marriage 
with Ann of Cleves and the alliance with the German Lutherans 
rendered active persecution in the highest degree impolitic. When 



1 His first marriage was entered into 
while he was still quite young, and be- 
fore lie had taken orders. The second, 
however, shows that he acted with some 
independence, for it took place in 1531, 
before Henry's open rupture with 
Eome, and while he was ambassador to 
the Emperor. At that time he was 
King's chaplain and archdeacon of 
Taunton, and his nuptials therefore 
were plainly an indication of heresy. 
— Strype's Memorials of Cranmer, 
Book" i. Chap, iii., Book in. Chap, 
xxvii. 

2 Burnet I. 256-7. It was not unti 1 
1543 that he ventured to confess this to 
the king (Ibid. p. 328). At his trial 
in 1556 his two marriages were one of 
the points of accusation against him 
(Ibid. II. 339). 

Sanders, in commenting upon Cran- 
mer's time-serving disposition, which 
enabled him to accommodate himself to 
Henry's capricious opinions, and yet to 
enter fully into the reformatory ideas 
predominant under Edward VI., does 



not fail to satirize his connubial pro- 
pensities. " TJnum illud molestissime 
tamen ferens, quod meretricem quan- 
dam suam non poterat palam uxoris 
loco libere habere, quia id non laturum 
Henricum sciebat, sed partim domi earn 
occultare, partim cum foras prodiret, 
cista quadam ad id affabre facta inclu- 
sam, secum una circumferre cogeretur. 
Iste ergo jam desiit esse Henricianus, et 
tarn ex immatura regis Edouardi setate 
quam ex Protectoris in sectas summa 
propenpione, sure statim simul et libi- 
dini et hseresi habenas laxandas statuit ; 
nam et scorto suo mox est publice pro 
uxore usus, et catechismum Edouardo 
dedicatum, falsse impiseque doctrinae 
plenum, in lucem edidit." — De Orig. 
et Prog. Schismatis Anglicani, p. 193 
(Ed. 1586). 

3 Melanchthon. Epist. Ed. 1565 p. 
34. 

* 2-3 Edw. YI. c. 21 (Pari. Hist. 
I. 586). 



THE SIX ARTICLES 



471 



the comedy of Henry's fourth marriage culminated in the tragedy 
of Cromwell's ruin (June, 1540), the reactionary elements again 
gathered strength. There can be no little doubt that the atrocity 
of the law had greatly interfered with its efficient execution and had 
aroused popular feeling, for now, although the Vicar-General was 
removed, the Catholics passed with speedy alacrity a bill moderating 
the act of the Six Articles, in so far as it related to marriage and 
concubinage. For capital punishment was substituted the milder 
penalty of confiscation to the king of all the property and revenue 
of the offenders. 1 

The Six Articles, as thus modified, remained the law of England 
during the concluding years of Henry's reign, nor is it likely that 
any one ventured to urge upon him seriously a relaxation of the 
principles to which he had committed himself thus definitely. The 
fall of Cromwell and the danger to which Cranmer was exposed for 
several years were sufficient to insure him against troublesome re- 
monstrants, even if his increasing irritability and capriciousness had 
not made those around him daily more alive to the danger of thwart- 
ing or resisting his idlest humor. How little progress, indeed, the 
Reformation had thus far made in England is shown in a letter 
written in 1546 by John Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester 
and Worcester, during the exile into which he was forced by the act 
of the Six Articles — "Our king has destroyed the pope, but not 
popery ; he has expelled all the monks and nuns, and pulled down 
their monasteries; he has caused all their possessions to be trans- 
ferred into his exchequer, and yet they are bound, even the frail 
female sex, by the king's command, to perpetual chastity. England 
has at this time at least ten thousand nuns, not one of whom is 
allowed to marry. The impious mass, the most shameful celibacy 
of the clergy, the invocation of saints, auricular confession, super- 
stitious abstinence from meats, and purgatory, were never before held 
by the people in greater esteem than at the present moment." 2 



1 32 Hen. VIII. c. 10.— Burnet I. 
282.— Pari. Hist. I. 575. 

Richard Hilles, writing in 1541 to 
Henry Bullinger, assumes that this mod- 
ification of the Six Articles only applied 
to those who were guilty of incontin- 
ence, and that it did not " appear to the 
king at all extreme still to hang those 
clergymen who marry or who retain 
those wives whom they had married pre- 



vious to the former statue" (Original 
Letters, Parker Soc. Pub. p. 205) — but 
both Burnet and the Parliamentary 
History make no such distinction, and 
in the abstract of the bill as printed in 
the Statues at Large (I. 281) it is de- 
scribed as applicable to " priests married 
or unmarried." 



Letters, Parker Soc. Pub. p. 38. 



472 



THE ANGLICAN CHUECH. 



On the 28th of January, 1547, Henry VIII. died, and Edward VI. 
succeeded to the perilous throne. Not yet ten years of age, his gov- 
ernment of course received its direction from those around him, and 
the rivalry between the protector Somerset and the chancellor Wri- 
othesley, Earl of Southampton, threw the former into the hands 
of the progressives, as the latter was the acknowledged head of the 
reactionary party. The ruin of Southampton and the triumph of 
Somerset, strengthened by his successful campaign in Scotland, soon 
began to develop their natural consequences on the religion of the 
country. Under the auspices of Cranmer, a Convocation was assem- 
bled, which was empowered to decide all questions in controversy. 
When the primate was anxious to again enjoy the solace of his wife's 
company and to relieve both her and himself from the stigma of un- 
lawful marriage, it is easy to understand that the subject of celibacy 
would receive early and appropriate attention ; and so confident were 
the reformers of success that they did not hesitate to enter into matri- 
mony without waiting for any formal sanction. 1 Accordingly, on 
December 17, 1547, a proposition was submitted to the effect that 
all canons, statutes, laws, decrees, usages, and customs, interfering 
with or prohibiting marriage, should be abrogated, and it was carried 
by a vote of 53 to 22. No time was lost. Two days afterwards a 
bill was introduced in the Commons permitting married men to be 
priests and to hold benefices. It was received with so much favor 
that it was read twice the same day, and on the 21st it was sent up 
to the Lords ; but in the Upper House it raised debates so prolonged 
that, as the members were determined to adjourn before Christmas, 
it was laid aside. This might be the more readily agreed to, since 
on the 23d an act was approved which abolished numerous severe 
laws of the former reign, including the statute of the Six Articles, 
and was immediately followed by another granting the use of the 
cup to the laity and prohibiting private masses. 2 

The repeal of the Six Articles left the marriage of the clergy 
subject to the previous laws of Henry, imposing on it various pains 
and penalties, but with the votes recorded in Convocation and Parlia- 



1 Thus Dr. Parker, afterwards Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, was married on 
June 24th, 1547, within six months 
after Henry's death, to Margaret, 
daughter of Eobert Harlston of Mattis- 
hall. As he had been in priest's orders 
since 1227, he assumed a liberty which 
was not even asked of Parliament until 



nearly eighteen months later (see his 
autobiographical memoranda in his Cor- 
respondence, pp. vii., x., Parker Soc, 
1853). 

2 1 Edw. I. c. 1, 12 (Pari. Hist. I. 
582-4).— Wilkins IV. 16.— Burnet, 
II. 40, 41 ; III. 189. 



PRIESTLY MARRIAGE LEGALIZED. 473 

merit, it is not likely that much vigor was displayed in their enforce- 
ment. Those interested could thus afford to await the reassembling 
of the Houses, which did not take place until November 24, 1548, 
but they claimed the reward of their patience by an early hearing in 
the session. On the 3d of December a bill was introduced, similar 
to that of the previous year, rendering married men eligible to the 
priesthood; it passed second reading on the 5th, and third" reading 
on the 6th. Apparently encouraged by the favorable reception 
accorded to it, the friends of the measure resolved on demanding 
further privileges. The bill was therefore laid aside, and on the 
next day a new one was presented which granted the additional 
liberty of marriage to those already in orders. It conceded to the 
established opinions the fact that it were better that the clergy should 
live chaste and single, yet, "as great filthiness of living had followed 
on the laws that compelled chastity and prohibited marriage," there- 
fore all laws and canons inhibiting sacerdotal matrimony should be 
abolished. This bill, after full discussion, was read a second and 
third time on the 10th and 12th, and was sent up to the Lords on 
the 13th. Again the Upper House was in no haste to pass it. It 
lay on the table until February 9, 1549, when it was stoutly con- 
tested, and, after being recommitted, it finally passed on the 19th, 
with the votes of nine bishops recorded against it. 1 

Cranmer and his friends were now at full liberty to establish the 
innovation by committing the clergy individually to marriage, and 
by enlisting the popular feeling in its support. During the discus- 
sion they had not been idle. Much controversial writing had occurred 
on both sides, in which Poynette, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, 
took an active part, while Bale, Bishop of Ossory, distinguished 
himself on the same side by raking together all the foul stories 
that could be collected concerning the celibate clergy — a scandalous 
material not likely to be lacking in either quantity or quality. 
Burnet declares that no law passed during the reign of Edward 
excited more contradiction and censure, and the matrimonialists soon 
found that, even with the act of parliament in their favor, their course 
was not wholly a smooth one. Cranmer ordered a visitation in his 
province, and directed as one of the points for inquiry and animad- 
version, "Whether any do contemn married priests, and, for that 
they be married, will not receive the communion or other sacraments 



1 2-3 Edw. VI. c. 21 (Pari. Hist. I. 586).— Burnet II. 88-9. 



474 



THE ANGLICAN CHUECH 



at their hands," 1 which distinctly reveals the difficulties encountered 
in eradicating the convictions of centuries from the popular mind. 
Sanders says, and with every appearance of probability, that the 
Archbishop of York united with Cranmer in ordering a visitation 
of the whole kingdom, during which the visitors investigated par- 
ticularly the morals of the clergy, and used every argument to impel 
them to marriage, not only declaring celibacy to be most dangerous 
to salvation, but intimating that all who adhered to it would be 
regarded as papists and enemies of the king. 2 The active interest 
which Cranmer took in the question is manifested by the fact that 
when Dr. Richard Smith, who had fled to Scotland in consequence 
of having endeavored to stir up a tumult at Oxford against Peter 
Martyr, desired to make his peace and return, the inducement which 
he offered to the Archbishop of Canterbury to obtain for him the 
king's pardon was that he would write a book in favor of priestly 
marriage, as he had previously done against it. 3 

The Reformers speedily found that they were not to escape without 
opposition. The masses of the people throughout England were in 
a state of discontent. The vast body of abbey lands acquired by 
the gentry and now inclosed bore hard upon many ; the raising of 
rents showed that secular landlords were less charitable than the 
ancient proprietors of the soil; the increase of sheep-husbandry 
threw many farm laborers out of employ; 4 and the savage enact- 
ments, already alluded to, against the unfortunate expelled monks 
show how large an element of influential disaffection was actively at 
work in the substratum of society. Those priests who disapproved 



1 "Wilkins IV. 26.— Cardwell's Doc- 
umentary Annals, I. 59. Wilkins and 
Cardwell date this in 1547, which is 
evidently impossible. Burnet (II. 102) 
alludes to it under 1549, which is much 
more likely to be correct. 

2 Sanderi Schisma Anglic, pp. 214-5. 

3 Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, Bk. 
II. chap. 14. — Smith subsequently at 
Louvain continued to urge the necessity 
of celibacy and was answered by Peter 
Martyr. Strype calls him a filthy 
fellow, notorious for lewdness, and his 
championship of chastity excited some 
merriment. There is an epigram upon 
him by Lawrence Humphrey — 

" Haud satis afiabre tractans fabrilia 
Smithus 
Librum de vita coelibe composuit 



Dumque pudicitiam, dum vota monastica 
laudat, 
Stuprat, sacra notans foedera conjugii." 

(Ibid. Chap. 25.) 

4 The vast growth of the sheep-farms 
had long been a subject of complaint. 
Even as early as 1516, Sir Thomas 
More describes with indignant energy 
the misery caused by the ejectment of the 
agricultural population in order to form 
enormous sheep-walks, which were 
found more profitable to the landlords 
than ordinary farming. He declares 
that the sheep "tarn edaces atque in- 
domitse esse coeperunt, ut homines de- 
vorent ipsos, agros, domos, oppida 
vastent ac depopulentur. ' ' — Utopia, 
Lib. i. 



RESISTANCE OF THE PEOPLE. 475 

of the rapid Protestantizing process adopted by the court could 
hardly fail to take advantage of opportunities so tempting, and they 
accordingly fanned the spark into a flame. The enforcement of the 
new liturgy, on Whitsunday, 1549, seemed the signal of revolt. 
Numerous risings took place, which were readily quelled, until one 
in Devonshire assumed alarming proportions. Ten thousand men 
in arms made demands for relief in religious as well as temporal 
matters. Lord Eussel, unable to meet them in the field, endeavored 
to gain time by negotiation, and offered to receive their complaints. 
These were fifteen in number, of which several demanded the resto- 
ration of points of the old religion, and one insisted on the revival 
of the Six Articles. On their refusal, another set was drawn up, 
in which not only were the Six Articles called for, but also a special 
provision enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. This was likewise 
rejected; but during the delay another rising occurred in Norfolk, 
reckoned at twenty thousand men, and yet another of less formidable 
dimensions in Yorkshire. Eussel finally scattered the men of Devon, 
while the Earl of Warwick succeeded in suppressing the rebels of 
Norfolk, when the promise of an amnesty caused the Yorkshiremen 
to disperse. 1 

The question of open resistance thus was settled. Cranmer and 
his friends had now leisure to consolidate their advantages and 
organize a system that should be permanent. In 1551, he and 
Eidley prepared with great care a series of forty-two articles, em- 
bodying the faith of the church of England, which was adopted by 
the convocation in 1552, and was ordered to be signed by all men 
in orders and all candidates for ordination. 2 Burnet speaks of it 
as bringing the Anglican doctrine and worship to perfection. It 
remained unaltered during the rest of Edward's reign, and under 
Elizabeth it was only modified verbally in the recension which re- 
sulted in the famous Thirty-nine Articles — the foundation stone of 
the Episcopalian edifice. Of these forty-two articles, the thirty-first 
declared that " Bishops, priests, and deacons are not commanded 
by God's law to vow the estate of a single life or to abstain from 
marriage." 3 



1 Burnet II. 117-9. 

2 Strype's Eccles. Memorials, II. 420. 

3 Burnet II. Collect. 217. In the 
Latin version, " Episcopis, presbyteris 



et diaconis non est mandatum ut cceli- 
batum voveant ; neque, jure divino 
coguntur matrimonio abstinere ;? ("Wil- 
kins IV. 76). 



476 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH, 



The canon law had thus invested the marriage of the clergy with 
all the sanctity that the union of man and wife could possess. Yet 
still the deep-seated conviction of the people as to the impropriety 
of such proceedings remained, troubling the repose of those who had 
entered into matrimony, and doubtless operating as a restraint upon 
the numbers of the imitators of Cranmer. Among the interroga- 
tories drawn up by John Hooper for the visitation of his diocese of 
Gloucester, in 1552, is one which enquires whether any midwife 
refuses to attend the confinement of women who are married to 
ministers of the church 1 — a suggestion which indicates how rooted 
was the popular aversion to such matches. If Strype's description 
of the clergy of the period, indeed, be correct, there was nothing in 
the character of the body to overcome the popular aversion in con- 
sideration of its purity and devotion to its sacred duties. 2 The act 
of 1549 had to a certain extent justified these prejudices by admit- 
ting the preferableness of a single life in the ministers of Christ, and 
it was resolved to remove every possible stigma by a solemn declara- 
tion of parliament. A bill was therefore prepared and speedily 
passed (Feb. 10th, 1552), which reveals how strong was the popular 
opposition, and how uncertain the position of the wives and children 
of the clergy. It declares " That many took occasion, from the 
words in the act formerly made about this matter, to say that it was 
only permitted, as usury and other unlawful things were, for the 
avoidance of greater evils, who thereupon spoke slanderously of such 
marriages, and accounted the children begotten in them to be bas- 
tards, to the high dishonor of the King and Parliament, and the 
learned clergy of the Realm, who had determined that the laws 
against priests' marriages were most unlawful by the law of God; 
to which they had not only given their assent in the Convocation, 
but signed it with their hands. These slanders did also occasion 
that the Word of God was not heard with due reverence." It was 
therefore enacted " That such marriages made according to the rules 
prescribed in the Book of Service should be esteemed good and valid, 
and that the children begot in them should be inheritable according 
to law." 3 



1 Strype's Eccles. Memorials, II. 355. 

2 Ibid. p. 445. — " Our curate is 
naught, an Assehead, a Dodipot, a 
Lack-Latine, and can do nothing." 

3 5-6 Edw. VI. c. 12 (Pari. Hist. I. 
594).— Burnet II. 192. 

It is curious to observe that the 



modern " Eitualistic " portion of the 
English clergy adopt the same line of 
argument from the marriage service of 
the Anglican ritual, and apply it not 
only to the priesthood but to the whole 
body of believers. See " The Church 
and the "World," edited by the Eev. 
Orby Shipley, 2d edition, 1866, p. 161. 



ACCESSION OF MAEY 



477 



A still further confirmation of the question was designed in a body 
of ecclesiastical law which was for several years in preparation by 
various commissions appointed for the purpose. In this it was pro- 
posed to make the abrogation of celibacy even more distinctly a 
matter of faith, for, in the second Title, among the various heresies 
condemned is that which, through the suggestion of the Devil, 
asserts that admission to holy orders takes away the right to marry. 
This work, however, though completed, had not yet received the 
royal assent, when the death of Edward VI. caused it to pass out 
of sight until 1571, when it was printed by Foxe and brought to 
the attention of Parliament, but was laid aside owing to the oppo- 
sition of Queen Elizabeth. 1 



If the Protestants indulged in any day-dreams as to the perma- 
nency of their institutions, they were not long in finding that a 
change of rulers was destined to cause other changes disastrous to 
their hopes. Even the funeral of Edward, on the 8th of August, 
1553, afforded them a foretaste of what was in store. Although 
Cranmer insisted that the public ceremonies in Westminster Abbey 
should be conducted according to the reformed rites, Queen Mary, 
still resident in the Tower, had private obsequies performed with 
the Roman ritual, where Gardiner celebrated mortuary mass in 
presence of the queen and some four hundred attendants. When 
the incense was carried around, after the Gospel, it chanced that the 
chaplain who bore it was a married man, and the zealous Dr. Weston 
snatched it from him, exclaiming, " Shamest thou not to do thine 
office, having a wife as thou hast ? The queen will not be censed 
by such as thou !" 2 

Trifling as was this incident, it foreboded the wrath to come. 
Though Mary was not crowned until October 1st, she had issued 
writs for a parliament to assemble on the 10th, and, as an entire 
change in the religious institutions of the country was intended, we 
may not uncharitably believe the assertion that every means of influ- 
ence and intimidation was employed to secure the return of reaction- 
ary members. These efforts were crowned with complete success. 



1 Eeform. Lcgg. Eccles. Tit. de 
Hseresibus. cap. xx. (Card well's Ed., 
Oxford, 1850, p. 20).— Cf. Tit. de Mat- 
rimonio c. ix. (p. 44). 

2 Strype's Eccles. Memor. III. 20. 



This story derives additional piquancy 
from the fact that this Dr. "Weston was 
somewhat notorious for uncleanness and 
was subsequently deprived of the 
Deanery of Windsor for adultery 
(Ibid. pp. 111-2). 



478 



THE ANGLICAN CHUECH. 



The Houses had not sat for three weeks, when a bill was sent down 
from the Lords repealing all the acts of Edward's reign concerning 
religion, including specifically those which permitted the marriage 
of priests and legitimated their offspring ; and after a debate of six 
days it passed the Commons. 1 

The effect of this was, of course, to revive the statute of the Six 
Articles, and to place all married priests at the mercy of the queen ; 
and as soon as she felt that she could safely exercise her power, she 
brought it to bear upon the offenders. A day or two after the disso- 
lution of parliament she commenced by issuing a proclamation in- 
hibiting married priests from officiating. 2 The Spanish marriage 
being agreed upon and the resultant insurrection of Sir Thomas 
Wyatt being suppressed, Mary recognized her own strength, and 
her Romanizing tendencies, which had previously been somewhat 
restrained, became openly manifested. On the 4th of March, 1554, 
she issued a letter to her bishops, of which the object was to restore 
the condition of affairs under Henry VIII., except that the royal 
prerogatives as head of the church were expressly disavowed. It 
contained eighteen articles, to be strictly enforced throughout all 
dioceses. Of these the seventh ordered that the bishops should by 
summary process remove and deprive all priests who had been mar- 
ried or had lived scandalously, sequestrating their revenues during 
the proceedings. Article VIII. provided that widowers, or those who 
promised to live in the strictest chastity, should be treated with leni- 
ency, and receive livings at some distance from their previous abode, 
being properly supported meanwhile; while Article IX. directed 
that those who suffered deprivation should not on that account be 
allowed to live with their wives, and that due punishment should be 
inflicted for all contumacy. 3 

No time was lost in carrying out these regulations. By the 9th 



1 1 Mary c. 2 (Pari. Hist. I. 609-10). 
—Burnet II. 255. 

2 Strype's Eccles. Memorials, III. 52. 

3 Burnet II. Append. 264. Accord- 
ing to Strype, Bonner's impatience did 
not wait for the royal injunctions, for 
in February lie deprived of their livings 
all the married priests in his diocese of 
London and commanded them to bring 
all their wives within a fortnight in 
order that they might be divorced. — 
Memorials of Cranmer, Bk. in. chap. 
8. 



Julius III. issued a Bull, March 8th, 
1554, denning Cardinal Pole's legatine 
powers, among which was that of re- 
moving the excommunication from 
married clerks and legitimating their 
children, the fathers being removed 
from function and benefice, separated 
from their wives, and subjected to pen- 
ance (Cardwell's Documentary An- 
nals, I. 131). This was the course 
adopted for a time, but as the king- 
dom was not yet formally reconciled 
to Borne, the action had was under 
the local authorities. 



PROCEEDINGS AGAINST MARRIED BISHOPS 



479 



of the same month, a commission was already in session at York, 
which cited the clergy to appear before it on the 12th. From an 
appeal which is extant, by one Simon Pope, rector of Warmington, 
it appears that men were deprived without citation or opportunity 
for defence ; * and that this was not infrequent is probable from the 
proceedings commenced against offenders of the highest class, de- 
signed and well fitted to strike terror into the hearts of the humbler 
parsons. On the 16th a commission was issued to the Bishops of 
Winchester (Stephen Gardiner), London (Bonner), Durham, St. 
Asaphs, Chichester, and LandafF, to investigate the cases of the 
Archbishop of York and the Bishops of St. Davids, Chester, and 
Bristol, who, according to report, had given a most pernicious ex- 
ample by taking wives, in contempt of God, to the damage of their 
own souls, and to the scandal of all men. Any three of the com- 
missioners were empowered to summon the accused before them, and 
to ascertain the truth of the report without legal delays or unneces- 
sary circumlocution. If it were found correct, then they were 
authorized to remove the offenders at once and forever from their 
dignities, and also to impose penance at discretion. This was scant 
measure of justice, considering that the marriage of these prelates 
had been contracted under sanction of law, and, if that law had 
recently been repealed, that at least the option of conforming to the 
new order of things could not decently be denied; yet even this 
mockery of a trial was apparently withheld, for the conge d'elire for 
their successors is dated March 18th, only two days after the com- 
mission was appointed. 2 

During the summer the bishops went on their visitations. The 
articles prepared by Bonner for his diocese are extant, among which 
we find directions to inquire particularly of the people whether their 
pastors are married, and, if separated, whether any communication 
or intercourse takes place between them and their wives ; also, 
whether any one, lay or clerical, ventures to defend sacerdotal 
matrimony. 3 Few of the weaker brethren could escape an inqui- 
sition so searching as this, and though some controversy arose, and 



1 Strype's Eccles. Memor. III. Ap- 
pend. 33. — In the same place (p. 31) 
may be found a copy of the summons 
served upon offenders of this class. 

2 Burnet II. 275 and Append. 256. 
— Rymer (T. XV. pp. 376-77) gives a 
similar commission dated March 9th, 



issued to Stephen Gardiner to eject the 
canons and prebendaries of "Westminster 
in the same summary manner. The 
proceedings throughout England were 
doubtless framed on these models. 

3 Burnet II. Append. 260. 



480 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



a few tracts were printed in defence of priestly marriage, 1 such men 
as Bonner were not likely to shrink from the thorough prosecution 
of the work which they had undertaken. 

When the convocation assembled in this year, it was therefore to 
be expected that only orthodox opinions would find expression. 
Accordingly, the lower House presented to the bishops an humble 
petition praying for the restoration of the old usages, among the 
points of which are requests that married priests be forcibly sepa- 
rated from their wives, and that those who endeavor to abandon 
their order be subjected to special animadversion. This clause shows 
that many unfortunates preferred to give up their positions and lose 
the means of livelihood, rather than quit the wives to whom they 
had sworn fidelity, demanding, as we shall see, much subsequent 
conflicting legislation. The social complications resulting from the 
change of religion are also indicated in the request that married 
nuns may be divorced, and that the pretended wives of priests have 
full liberty to marry again. 2 

Everything being thus prepared, the purification of the church 
from married heretics was prosecuted with vigor. Archbishop Parker 
states that there were in England some 16,000 clergymen, of whom 
12,000 were deprived on this account, many of them most summarily; 
some on common report, without trial, others without being sum- 
moned to appear before their judges, and others again while lying in 
jail for not obeying the summons. Some renounced their wives, and 
were yet deprived, while those who were deprived were also, as we 
have seen, forced to part with their wives. We can readily believe 
that the most ordinary forms of justice were set aside, in view of the 
illegal and indecorous haste of the proceedings against the married 
bishops described above, but Parker's estimate of the number of 
sufferers is greatly exaggerated. According to Dr. Tanner, in the 
diocese of Norfolk — then estimated at one-eighth of the whole king- 
dom — there were only 335 deprivations on this account; and at 
York, from April 27th to December 20th, 1554, there were only 
fifty-one ejected. 3 It is probable, therefore, that the list throughout 



1 Bishop Poynette wrote a book en- 
titled "An Apologie on the Godly 
Marriadge of Priestes," in rejoinder 
to Martin's " Traictise declaryng and 
plainly prouyng that the pretensed 
marriage of priestes and professed per- 
sones is no marriage," which was a re- 
ply to Poynette 's previous work. Bale 



also issued a bitter attack on Bonner's 
Articles (Card well's Documentary An- 
nals, I. 135) and Dr. Parker, afterwards 
Archbishop of Canterbury, published a 
voluminous rejoinder to Martin. 

2 Wilkins IV. 96-7. 

3 Burnet II. 276 ; III. 225-6. 



HUMILIATION OF MAREIED PRIESTS. 



481 



England would not exceed three thousand; yet when to these are 
added the hosts who no doubt succeeded in retaining their positions 
by a compliance with the law in quietly putting away their wives, 1 
it will be seen that the privilege of marriage had been eagerly im- 
proved by the clergy, and that an amount of misery which it would 
be difficult to estimate was caused by the enforcement of the canons. 

The proceedings in the case of John Turner, rector of St. Leonard's, 
London, would seem to show that the extremity of humiliation was 
inflicted on these unfortunates. Cited on March 16th to answer to 
the charge of being a married man, he confessed the accusation, and 
we find him on the 19th condemned to lose Ms benefice and be sus- 
pended from all priestly functions, to be divorced from his wife, and to 
undergo such further punishment as the canons required. The sen- 
tence of divorce soon followed, and on May 14th he was obliged to 
do penance in his late church in Eastcheap, holding a lighted candle 
in his hand and solemnly declaring to the assembled congregation — 
"Good people, I am come hither, at this present time, to declare 
unto you my sorrowful and penitent heart, for that, being a priest, 
I have presumed to marry one Amy German, widow; and, under 
pretence of that matrimony, contrary to the canons and custom of 
the universal church, have kept her as my wife, and lived contrary 
to the canons and ordinances of the church, and to the evil example 
of good Christian people ; whereby now, being ashamed of my former 
wicked living here, I ask Almighty God mercy and forgiveness, and 
the whole Church, and am sorry and penitent even from the bottom 
of my heart therefore. And in token hereof, I am here, as you see, 
to declare and show unto you my repentance : that before God, on 
the latter day, you may testify with me of the same. And I most 
heartily and humbly pray and desire you all, whom by this evil 
example doing I have greatly offended, that for your part you will 
forgive me, and remember me in your prayers, that God may give 
me grace, that hereafter I may live a continent life, according to His 
laws and the godly ordinances of our mother the holy Catholic 



1 A specimen of the form of restitu- 
tion subscribed by those who were re- 
stored on profession of amendment 
and repentance has been preserved — 
"Whereas ... I the said Kobert do 
now lament and bewail my life past, 
and the offence by me committed ; in- 
tending firmly by God's grace here- 
after to lead a pure, chast, and con- 
tinent life . . . and do here before my 



competent judge and ordinary most 
humbly require absolution of and from 
all such censures and pains of the laws 
as by my said offence and ungodly be- 
havior I have incurred and deserved : 
promising firmly . . . never to return 
to the said Agnes Staunton as to my 
wife or concubine, &c." — (Wilkins 
IV. 104). 



31 



482 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 



Church, through and by His grace. And do here, before you all, 
openly promise for to do during my life." 1 Such scenes as these 
were well calculated to produce the effect desired upon the people, 
but we can only guess at the terrorism which was requisite to force 
educated and respectable men to submit to such degradation. 

All this was done by the royal authority, wielding the ecclesiasti- 
cal power usurped by Henry VIII. Strictly speaking, it was highly 
irregular and uncanonical, but as the papal supremacy was yet in 
abeyance it could not be accomplished otherwise. At last, however, 
the kingdom was ripe for reconciliation with Kome. In calling the 
parliament of 1554, the queen issued a circular letter to the sheriffs 
commanding them to admonish the people to return members " of the 
wise, grave, and Catholic sort." 2 Her wishes were fulfilled, and ere 
the year was out Cardinal Pole was installed with full legatine 
powers, and Julius III. had issued his Bull of Indulgence, reuniting 
England to the church from which she had been violently severed. 3 
An obedient parliament lost no time in repealing all statutes adverse 
to the claims of the Holy See, but its subserviency had limits, and 
one class largely interested in the reforms of Henry had sufficient 
influence to maintain its heretical rights. The church lands granted 
or sold to laymen were not revendicated. Indeed, the queen, in her 
call for the parliament, had felt it necessary to contradict the rumour 
that she and Philip intended the "alteration of any particular Man's 
Possessions." Though the transactions by which they had been 
acquired were wholly illegal ; though no duration of possession could 
bar the imprescriptible rights of the church, yet the nobles and 
country gentlemen enriched by the spoliation were too numerous and 
powerful, and the reclamation of the kingdom was too important, to 
incur any peril by unseasonably insisting on reparation for Henry's 
injustice. The abbatial manors and rich priories, the chantries, hos- 
pitals, and colleges were therefore left in the impious hands of those 
who had been fortunate enough to secure them, 4 and the miserable 



1 Strype's Memorials of Cranmer, 
Bk. in. chap. 8.— Nov. 14th, 1554, we 
find a record of four priests doing pen- 
ance in white shirts and holding candles 
at Paul's Cross, London, while Harps- 
field preached a sermon. — Strype's 
Eccles. Memor. III. 203. 

a Pari. Hist. I. 616. 

3 The Bull is dated December 24, 
1554 (Wilkins IV. 111).— Parliament 



repealed the attainder of Cardinal 
Pole, November 22d, and on the 24th 
he arrived in London as legate (Bur- 
net II. 261-2). 

4 1 and 2 Phil, and Mary c. 8 (Pari. 
Hist. I. 624). The title of the bill 
shows that, though the Parliament was 
almost exclusively Catholic, it was 
disposed to make its obedience to Kome 
the price for obtaining confirmation of 



QUESTION OF THE CHURCH LANDS 



483 



remnants of the religious orders were left to the conscience of the 
queen, who made haste to get rid of such fragments of the spoil as 
had been retained by the crown. 1 

Whatever tacit understanding there may have been on this delicate 
subject between Queen Mary and Pope Julius was not assented to by 
the imperious Caraffa who shortly afterwards ascended the chair of 
St. Peter. Elected May 23, 1555, he lost no time in proclaiming 
the imprescriptible rights of the church, and by his Bull "Injunctum 
nobis" issued June 21st, he pronounced null and void "de apostolicse 
potestatis plenitudine " all transactions by which ecclesiastical pos- 
sessions had passed into the hands of laymen, who were duly threat- 
ened with excommunication for prolonged attempts to hold their 
unhallowed acquisitions. 2 The effort of course was fruitless, but the 
spirit in which the English protestants watched the apparent opening 
of a breach between England and Rome is well expressed in a letter 
of Aug. 23, 1555, from Sir Richard Morrison to Henry Bullinger — 
" This anti-Paul, Paul of the apostasy, the servant of the devil, this 
antichrist newly created at Rome, thinks it but a very small plunder 
that is offered to him, that he is again permitted in England to 
tyrannise over our consciences, unless the revenues be restored to the 
monasteries, that is, the pigsties ; the patrimony, as he calls it, of the 
souls that are now serving in the filth of purgatory. Our ambassa- 
dors, who went to Rome for the purpose of bringing back the wolf 
upon the sheep of Christ, are now with the emperor, and bring us 
these demands of the chief pontiff: God grant that he may urge 
them in every possible way." 3 The hopes of the reformers however 
were disappointed, for Paul IV. gave way, and on the reassembling 
of Parliament, Oct. 23, 1555, a Bull was read by which the pope 
assented to the arrangement agreed to by Cardinal Pole, confirming 
the church lands to their new possessors. 4 

Cardinal Pole, indeed, was not remiss in giving the sanction of the 
papal authority to all that had been done. Convoking a synod, he 
issued, in 1555, his Legatine Constitutions, by which all marriages 
of those included in the prohibited orders were declared null and 



the abbey lands — " A Bill for repealing 
all statutes, articles, and provisoes made 
against the See Apostolique of Home, 
since the 20th of Henry VIII., and 
for the establishment of all spiritual 
and ecclesiastical possessions and here- 
ditaments conveyed to the laity." 



1 2 and 3 Phil, and Mary, c. 4 
(Pari. Hist. pp. 626-8). 

2 Mag. Bull. Roman. T. I. p. 809. 

3 Original Letters, Parker Soc. Pub. 
p. 149. 

* Pari. Hist. I, 626: II. 342. 



484 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



void. Such apostates were ordered to be separated by ecclesiastical 
censures and by whatever legal processes might be required; all who 
dared to justify such marriages or to obstinately remain in their un- 
holy bonds were to be rigorously prosecuted and punished according 
to the ancient canons, which were revived and declared to be in full 
force in order to prevent similar scandals for the future. 1 As the 
queen by special warrant had decreed that all canons adopted by 
synods should have the full effect of laws binding on the clergy, 
these constitutions at once restored matters to their pristine con- 
dition. It was doubtless in order to mark in the most conspicuous 
manner his detestation of clerical marriage that Pole descended to 
the pettiness of ordering the body of Peter Martyr's wife to be dug 
up from its resting-place, near the tomb of St. Prideswide in Christ's 
Church, Oxford, and to be buried in a dung-hill. 2 

It was easy to pass decrees ; it was doubtless gratifying to eject 
married priests by the thousand and to grant their livings to hungry 
reactionaries or to the crowd of needy churchmen whom Italy had 
ever ready to supply the spiritual wants and collect the tithes of the 
faithful. All this was readily accomplished, but the difficulty lay in 
overcoming the eternal instincts of human nature. The struggle to 
effect this commenced at once. 

It was, indeed, hardly to be expected that those who had entered 
into matrimony with the full conviction of its sanctity would willingly 
abandon all intercourse with their wives, although they might yield 
a forced assent to the pressure of the laws, the prospect of poverty, 
and the certainty of infamous punishment. Accordingly we find 
that the necessity at once arose of watching the " reconciled " priests, 
who continued to do in secret what they could no longer practise 
openly. Some, indeed, found the restrictions so onerous that they 
endeavored to release themselves from the bonds of the church rather 
than to submit longer to the separation from their wives ; and this 
apparently threatened so great a dearth in the ranks of the clergy 



1 Card. Poli Constit. Legat. Decret. 
Y. ("Wilkins IT. 800). 

2 Strype's Parker, Book n. chap. vi. 
In 1561 the remains were exhumed 
from the stables of Dr. Marshall, the 
previous dean of Christ's Church, and 
reburied in the church, the precaution 
being taken of mingling them with the 
bones of St. Prides wide, so as to pre- 
vent any future profanation in case of 



another revolution of religion. The 
affair excited considerable attention at 
the time, and produced the following 
epigram : 
Femineum sexum Romani semper amarunt : 

Projiciunt corpus cur muliebre foras ? 
Hoc si tu quaeras, facilis responsio danda 
est: 

Corpora non curant mortua, viva 
petunt. 



ADDITIONAL LEGISLATION". 



485 



that Cardinal Pole, as Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1556, forbade 
the withdrawal of any one from the mysteries and functions of the 
altar, under pain of the law. 1 

Notwithstanding all this legislation, royal, parliamentary, and 
ecclesiastical, the question refused to settle itself, and the Convocation 
which assembled on the 1st of January, 1557, was obliged to publish 
an elaborate series of articles, which demonstrated that previous 
enactments had either not been properly observed or that they had 
failed in effecting their purpose. Thus the prohibition of marriage 
to those in priests' orders was formally renewed. Such of the mar- 
ried clergy, who had undergone penance and had been restored, as 
still persisted in holding intercourse with their separated wives, were 
to be deprived irrevocably of their office, and only to be admitted to 
lay communion — thus reversing the policy of Cardinal Pole's injunc- 
tions. As all priests who had been married were obnoxious to the 
people, they were to be removed from the priesthood; or, afe least, 
on account of the scarcity of ministers, to act only as curates, and 
to be incapable of holding benefices until a thorough course of pen- 
ance should have washed away their sins. Even then, in no case 
were they to officiate in the dioceses wherein they had been married, 
but were to be removed to a distance of at least sixty miles, and 
if detected in any intercourse with their wives, they were to incur 
severe punishment, a single interchange of words being sufficient to 
call down the penalty. To insure the observance of these rules, all 
synods were directed to make special inquiry into the lives of these 
unfortunates, who were thus to exist under a perpetual surveillance, 
at the mercy of inimical spies and informers. 2 This may, perhaps, 
be considered a moderate expiation for men who, in those days of 
fierce religious convictions, possessed that flexibility of faith which 
enabled them to change their belief with every dynastic accident. 

If the rigid rules now introduced were successful in nothing else, 



1 ' ' That none of those priests that 
were, under the pretence of lawfull 
matrimony, married, and now recon- 
ciled, do privilie resorte to their pre- 
tensed wives, or suffer the same to 
resorte unto them. And that those 
priests do in no wise henceforth with- 
drawe themselves from the mynisterie 
and office of priesthodde under the 
paine of the lawes " — Pole's Injunc- 
tions in Diocese of Gloucester (Wil- 
kins IY. 146). 



2 Wilkins IY. 157. Thus in the 
visitation of the diocese of Lincoln, 
the vicar of Spaldwick was presented 
for scandalizing his flock by carrying 
in his arms his child by a wife from 
whom he had been separated. At the 
same time a priest of Caisho named 
Nix was subjected to penance for con- 
sorting with his former wife, but was 
permitted to resume his functions — 
Strype's Eccles. Memor. III. 293. 



486 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 

they at all events succeeded in restoring the old troubles with the 
old canons. Denied the lawful gratification of human instincts, the 
clergy immediately returned to the habits which had acquired for 
them so much odium in times past, and the rulers of the church at 
once found themselves embarked in the sempiternal struggle with 
immorality in all its shapes and disguises. If the scandalous chron- 
icles of the period be worthy of credit, neither Gardiner nor Bonner, 
nor other active promoters of the canons, were without the visible 
evidences of the frailty of the flesh ; x and though they were above 
the reach of correction, the minor clergy were not so fortunate. The 
Convocation of 1557, which issued the stringent regulations just 
quoted, was also obliged to promulgate articles concerning the resi- 
dence of women with priests, and the punishment of licentiousness, 
similar to those which we have seen reproduced so regularly for ten 
centuries. Cardinal Pole, too, in his visitation of the same year, 
directed inquiries to be made on these points in a manner which 
shows that they were existing, and not merely anticipated evils. 2 

Fortunately for the character of the Anglican clergy, the reign 
of reaction was short. On the 17th of November, 1558, Queen 
Mary closed her unhappy life, and Cardinal Pole followed her within 
sixteen hours. The Marian persecution had been long enough and 
sharp enough to give to heresy all the attractions of martyrdom, 
thus increasing its fervor and enlarging its circle of earnest disciples ; 
and the sudden termination of that persecution, before it had time 
to accomplish its work of extirpation, left the reformers more zealous 
and dangerous than ever. Heresy had likewise been favored by the 
discontent of the people arising from the disastrous and expensive 
war with France, which aided the improvident restoration of the 
church lands in impoverishing the exchequer and in rendering neces- 
sary heavy subsidies from the nation, repaid only by cruelty and 
misfortune. Dread of Spanish influence also had a firm hold of the 
imagination of the masses, while the church itself was especially 
unpopular, as the conviction was general that the ill-success of Mary's 
administration was attributable to the control exercised by ecclesias- 
tics over the public affairs. Under such auspices, the royal power 
passed into the hands of a princess who, though by nature leaning 



1 Strype's Eccles. Memor. III. 111-12. 

2 Wilkins IV. 169. 



ELIZABETH'S HESITATION. 487 

to the Catholic faith and disposed to tread in the footsteps of her 
father, was yet placed by the circumstances of her birth in implac- 
able hostility to Rome, and who held her throne only on the tenure 
of waging eternal warfare with reaction. The reformers felt that 
the doom of Catholicism was sealed. Emerging from their hiding- 
places and hastening back from exile, the religious refugees proceeded 
at once to practise the rites of Edward VI. Elizabeth, however, 
after ordering some changes in the Roman observances, forbade, on 
the 27th of December, all further innovations until the meeting of 
Parliament, which was convoked for January 23, 1559. 

Parliament assembled on the appointed day and sat until the 8th 
of May. It at once passed acts resuming the ecclesiastical crown 
lands and restoring the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, 
and it repealed all of Mary's legislation concerning the power of the 
papacy. Several other bills were adopted modifying the religion of 
the kingdom, with a view of discovering some middle term which 
should unite the people in a common form of belief and worship. 1 
Anxious to avoid all extremes, it negatived the measures introduced 
by the ardent friends of the Reformation, and among the unsuccess- 
ful attempts was one which proposed to restore all priests who had 
been deprived on account of marriage. This, indeed, was laid aside 
by the special command of the queen herself 2 

The question of clerical marriage was thus left in a most perplexed 
and unsatisfactory condition. The Six Articles had been repealed 
by Edward VI., and had been virtually revived by Mary ; but Mary's 
efforts had been to restore the independent jurisdiction of the church, 
and she had therefore not continued to regard the Six Articles as in 
force, the canons of synods and the legatine constitutions of Pole 
being the law of her ecclesiastical establishment. This was now 
all swept away, a statute to fill the void was refused, and men were 
left to draw their own deductions and act at their own peril. Eliza- 
beth refused the sanction of law to sacerdotal marriage, and would 
not restore the deprived priests, yet she did not enforce any prohibi- 
tory regulations, and even promoted many married men. Dr. Parker, 
the religious adviser of Ann Boleyn, who had left him in charge of 
her daughter's spiritual education, was married, and one of Eliza- 
beth's earliest acts was to nominate him for the vacant primacy of 



1 1 Eliz. c. 1, 2, 4 (Pari. Hist. I. 646-76). 

2 Burnet, II. 386-95. 



488 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



Canterbury, which after long resistance he was forced to accept. 
The uncertainty of the situation and the anxiety of those interested 
are well illustrated by a letter to Dr. Parker, dated April 30th, just 
before the rising of Parliament, from Dr. Sandys, afterwards Bishop 
of Worcester : " The bill is in hand to restore men to their livings; 
how it will speed I know not . . . Nihil est statutum de conjugio 
sacerdotum, sed tanquam relictum in medio. Lever was married 
now of late. The queen's majesty will wink at it, but not stablish 
it by law, which is nothing else but to bastard our children." 1 In 
this, Dr. Sandys spoke nothing but truth, and those who were mar- 
ried were obliged formally to have their children legitimated, as even 
Dr. Parker found it necessary to do this in the case of his son 
Matthew. 2 

At length Elizabeth made up her mind, and in the exercise of her 
royal supremacy she asked for no act of Parliament to confirm her 
decree. Archbishop Parker has the credit of being the most efficient 
agent in overcoming her repugnance to the measure, and the ungra- 
cious manner in which she finally accorded the permission shows how 
strong were the prejudices which he had to encounter. In June, 
1559, she issued a series of "Injunctions to the Clergy and Laity" 
which restored the national religion to nearly the same position as 
that adopted by Edward VI., and it is curious to observe that when 
she comes to speak of sacerdotal matrimony, she carefully avoids the 
responsibility of sanctioning it herself, but assumes that the law of 
Edward is still in force. All that she does, therefore, is to surround 
it with such limitations and restrictions as shall prevent its abuse, 
and although this form had perhaps the advantage of establishing 



1 Parker's Correspondence, p. 66. — 
Sanders does not fail to make the most 
of this refusal to legalize priestly mar- 
riage by act of Parliament, and of the 
hesitation which rendered the final 
decision a mere toleration and not an 
approval. " Clerus enim in Anglia 
novus, partim ex apostatis nostris, par- 
tim ex hominibus mere laicis factus, ut 
est valde spiritualis, primo quoque 
tempore de nuptiis cogitabat ; multum- 
que sategit, ut conjugia Episcoporum 
Oanonicorum et cfeterorum ministorum 
legibus approbarentur ; sed obtineri non 
potuit, quia vel turpe videbatur minis- 
terio, vel reipublicse perniciosum. Edo- 
vardus quidem sextus omnes canonicas 
et humanas prohibitiones circa cleri- 
corum aut etiam religiosorum connubia 
lege comitiali seu parlamentaria sustu- 



lerat ; earn legem mox abrogavit Maria, 
nunc restituendam ac renovandam 
clamitant isti, sed non exaudiuntur: 
omnes tamen per totum fere regnum 
quia de dono [castitatis] (ut loquuntur) 
non sunt certi, non secundum leges, sed 
secundum indulgentiam ; vel (ut illi 
dicunt) secundum scripturas, sed ad 
libidinem suam compositas, ineunt 
prima, secunda, vel etiam tertia con- 
jugia, contra canones et morem non 
solum Latinorum sed etiam Grsecorum ; 
et prole ita abundant, ut ad illam susten- 
tandam opibusque augendam, et popu- 
lus supra modum gravetur, et ipsi misere 
beneficia sua expilent." — De Schismate 
Anglicano, Lib. in. (Ingoldstatii, 
1586, p. 299). 

2 Strype's Annals, I. 81. 



ELIZABETH'S INJUNCTIONS. 



489 



the legality of all preexisting marriages, yet the regulations pro- 
mulgated were degrading in the highest degree, and the reason 
assigned for permitting it could only be regarded as affixing a stigma 
on every pastor who confessed the weakness of his flesh by seeking 
a wife. 1 

From the temper of these regulations it is manifest that if Eliza- 
beth yielded to the advice of her counsellors and to the pressure of 
the times, she did not give up her private convictions or prejudices, 
and that she desired to make the marriage of her clergy as unpopular 
and disagreeable as possible. It was probably for the purpose of 
meeting her objections that the order for a return of the clergy, 
issued by Archbishop Parker, October 1st, 1561, contained in the 
blanks issued the unusual entry classifying them as married or un- 
married, 2 and Strype informs us that in the Archdeaconry of Lon- 
don the returns show the ministry for the most part to have been 
filled with married men. 3 Even the haughty spirit of the Tudor, 



1 Koyal Injunctions of 1559, Art. 
xxix. "Although there be no prohi- 
bition by the word of God, nor any 
example of the primitive church, but 
that the priests and ministers of the 
church may lawfully, for the avoiding 
of fornication, have an honest and 
sober wife, and that for the same pur- 
pose the same was by act of Parliament 
in the time of our dear brother King 
Edward the Sixth made lawful, where- 
upon a great number of the clergy of 
this realm were married and so continue ; 
yet, because there hath grown offence 
and some slander to the church, by 
lack of discreet and sober behavior in 
many ministers of the church, both in 
chusing of their wives and undiscreet 
living with them, the remedy whereof 
is necessary to be sought ; it is thought 
therefore very necessary that no man- 
ner of priest or deacon shall hereafter 
take to his wife any manner of woman 
without the advice and allowance first 
had upon good examination by the 
bishop of the same diocese and. two 
justices of the peace of the same shire 
dwelling next to the place where the 
same woman hath made her most abode 
before her marriage ; nor without the 
goodwill of the parents of the said 
woman if she have any living, or two 
of the next of her kinsfolks, or for lack 
of the knowledge of such, of her master 
or mistress where she serveth. And 
before she shall be contracted in any 



place, he shall make a good and certain 
proof thereof to the minister or to the 
congregation assembled for that pur- 
pose, which shall be upon some holy- 
day where divers may be present. And 
if any shall do otherwise, that then 
they shall not be permitted to minister 
either the word or the sacraments of 
the church, nor shall be capable of any 
ecclesiastical benefice. And for the 
marriages of any bishops, the same 
shall be allowed and approved by the 
metropolitan of the province and also 
by such commissioners as the Queen's 
Majesty thereunto shall appoint. And 
if any master or dean or any head of 
any college shall purpose to marry, the 
same shall not be allowed but by such 
to whom the visitation of the same 
doth properly belong, who shall in any 
wise provide that the same turn not to 
the hindrance of their house" — (Wil- 
kins IV. 186). 

See also a letter of Theodore Beza, 
Zurich Letters, p. 247 (Parker Soc. 
Publications). 

2 Cardwell's Documentary Annals, 
I. 309. 

3 Strype 's Parker, Book n. chap. v. 
— In 1569 the returns for the Arch- 
deaconry of Canterbury show 135 mar- 
ried clergymen to 34 licensed preachers, 
and there is no mention of any unmar- 
ried men (lb. in. xxiv.). 



490 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH, 



thus,, could not restrain the progress which had now fairly set in. 
Those around her who controlled the public affairs were all committed 
to the Reformation, and were resolved that every point gained should 
be made secure. When, therefore, in 1563, there was published a 
recension of the Forty-two Articles issued by Edward VI. in 1552, 
resulting in the well-known Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of 
England, care was taken that the one relating to the liberty of mar- 
riage should be made more emphatic than before. Not content with 
the simple proposition of the original that " Bishops, priests, and 
deacons are not commanded by God's law either to vow the estate 
of a single life, or to abstain from marriage," the emphatic corollary 
was added, " Therefore it is lawful for them as for all other Christian 
men to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same 
to serve better to Godliness" 1 — such as we find it preserved to the 
present day. This specific declaration in a special article marks the 
necessity which was felt to place the matter beyond controversy, as 
a rule of practice. The Articles on Justification and Works of 
Supererogation (Arts. xi. and xix.) would have sufficed, so far as 
principle was concerned. 

This was not an empty form. Not only the right to marry at 
their own discretion, thus expressly declared, did much to relieve 
them from the degrading conditions laid down by the queen, but the 
revival and strengthening of the article marked a victory gained over 
the reaction. When, in 1559, the queen appointed a commission to 
visit all the churches of England and enforce compliance with the 
order of things then existing, the articles prepared for its guidance 
enjoin no investigation into opinions respecting priestly marriage, 
showing that to be an open question, concerning which every man 
might hold his private belief. 2 After the adoption of the Thirty-nine 



1 In the English version, as given by 
Burnet (Vol. II. Append. 217), there 
are 42 articles, of which this is the 31st. 
In the Latin edition (Wilkins IV. 236), 
there are hut 39 articles, this being the 
32d, which is the arrangement accord- 
ing to the standard of the Anglican 
church. 

2 Wilkins IV. 189-91.— This com- 
mission was the commencement of the 
Court of High Commission, which 
played so lamentable a part in the 
troubles of the succeeding reigns. The 
result of its visitation in 1559 shows 



how little real conviction existed among 
the clergy who had been exposed to the 
capricious persecutions of alternating 
rulers. Out of 9400 beneficiaries in 
England under Mary, but 14 bishops, 
6 abbots, 12 deans, 12 archdeacons, 15 
heads of colleges, 50 prebendaries, and 
80 rectors of parishes had abandoned 
their preferment on account of Pro- 
testantism (Burnet Vol. II. Append. 
217), and of these it is fair to assume 
that the higher dignitaries at least had 
not been allowed to retain their posi- 
tions. 



ELIZABETH'S KEPUGN ANCE. 



491 



Articles, however, this latitude was no longer allowed. In 156T 
Archbishop Parker's articles of instruction for the visitation of that 
year enumerate, among the heretical doctrines to be inquired after, 
the assertion that the Word of God commands abstinence from mar- 
riage on the part of ministers of the church. 1 As we shall see, it 
was about the same time that the council of Trent likewise erected 
the question of clerical marriage into a point of belief. 

Yet Elizabeth never overcame her repugnance to the marriage of 
the clergy, nor is it, perhaps, to be wondered at when we consider 
the contempt in which she held the church of which she was the 
head, 2 and her general aversion to sanctioning in others the matri- 
mony which she was herself always toying with and never contract- 
ing. When she made her favorites of both sexes suffer for any 
legalized indiscretions of the kind, it is scarcely surprising that she 
always looked with disfavor on those of the clergy who availed them- 
selves of the privilege which circumstances had extorted from her, 
and which she would fain have withheld. When Archbishop Parker 
ventured to remonstrate with her on her popish tendencies, she 
sharply told him that " she repented of having made any married 
bishops." This was a cutting rejoinder, but even more pointed was 
the insolence from which his life-long services could not protect his 
wife. The first time the queen visited the archiepiscopal palace, on 
her departure she turned to thank Mrs. Parker: — "And you — 
madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you, so I 
know not what to call you — but, howsoever, I thank you." 3 So in 
Ipswich, in August, 1561, she found great fault with the marriage 
of the clergy, and especially with the number of wives and children 
in cathedrals and colleges — a feeling possibly justified by occasional 
disorders not unlikely to occur. In 1563 we find Sir John Bourne 
complaining to the Privy Council that the Dean and Chapter of 
Worcester had broken up the large organ, the pride of the cathe- 
dral, which had cost <£200 ; the metal pipes whereof were melted into 
dishes and divided among the wives of the prebendaries and the case 
used to make bedsteads for them ; the copes and ornaments, he added, 



1 Wilkins TV. 253.— Strype's Parker, 
App. liii. 

2 In 1576 she declared to Grindal, 
then Archbishop of Canterbury, "that 
it was good for the church to have few 
preachers, and that three or four might 
suffice for a county ; and that the read- 



ing of the Homilies to the people was 
enough." — Strype's Life of Grindal, p. 
221. — See also Strype's Parker, Book 
II. chap. xx. 

3 Strickland, Life of Queen Eliza- 
beth, Chap. iv. 



492 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 

would likewise have been distributed had not some of the unmarried 
men prevented it, "and as by their Habit and Apparel you might 
know the Priests wives, and by their Gate in the Market and the 
Streets from an hundred other Women : so in the Congregation and 
Cathedral Church they were easy to be known by placing themselves 
above all other of the most ancient and honest Calling of the said 
City." 1 There was no lack of persons to pour such stories into the 
queen's ear, and, with her well-known tendencies, it is no wonder 
that her counsellors found it difficult to restrain her to the simple 
order which she issued from Ipswich, declaring "that no manner of 
person, being either the head or member of any college or cathedral 
church within this realm, shall, from the time of the notification 
hereof in the same college, have, or be permitted to have, within the 
precinct of any such college, his wife, or other woman, to abide and 
dwell in the same, or to frequent and haunt any lodging within the 
same college, upon pain that whosoever shall do to the contrary shall 
forfeit all ecclesiastical promotions in any cathedral or collegiate 
church within this realm." Burghley, in sending this royal man- 
date to Parker, remarks, " Her Majesty continueth very evil affected 
to the state of matrimony in the clergy. And if [I] were not 
therein very stiff, her Majesty would openly and utterly condemn 
and forbid it. In the end, for her satisfaction, this injunction now 
sent to your Grace is devised. The good order thereof shall do no 
harm. I have devised to send it in this sort to your Grace for your 
province ; and to the Archbishop of York for his ; so as it shall not 
be promulged to be popular." 2 It is doubtless to this occurrence that 
we may attribute the last relic of clerical celibacy enforced among 
Protestants, that of the Fellows of the English Universities. 

This injunction of Queen Elizabeth caused no little excitement. 
Though Burghley had prudently endeavored to prevent its becoming 
"popular," yet Cox, Bishop of Ely, in remonstrating against its 
cruelty to those whom it affected in his cathedral seat, shows that it 
was speedily known to all men, and that it gave exceeding comfort 
to the reactionaries — "What rejoicing and jeering the adversaries 
make ! How the godly ministers are discouraged, I will pass over." 3 
In the Universities, where crowds of young men were collected, there 
might be some colorable excuse for the regulation, but in the splendid 



1 Strype's Annals, I. 364-5. 

2 Parker's Correspondence, pp. 146-8. 3 Ibid. p. 152. 



493 

and spacious buildings connected with the cathedrals some milder 
remedy might easily have been found, and the mandate was particu- 
larly unpalatable to married bishops. Parker himself, who was indi- 
vidually interested in the matter, made a personal appeal to the 
queen, the result of which was to wound him deeply, as well as to 
show him how extreme were her prejudices on the subject. He 
pours forth his feelings in a letter to Burghley describing the inter- 
view — " I was in an horror to hear such words to come from her 
mild nature and Christianly learned conscience, as she spake of 
God's holy ordinance and institution of matrimony. I marvel that 
our states in that behalf cannot please her Highness, which we doubt 
nothing at all to please God's sacred Majesty." He deplores the 
effect which it must produce on the people — " We alone of our time 
openly brought in hatred, shamed and traduced before the malicious 
and ignorant people, as beasts without knowledge to Godward, in 
using this liberty of his word, as men of effrenate intemperency, 
without discretion or any godly disposition worthy to serve in our 
state. Insomuch that the queen's Highness expressed to me a 
repentance that we were thus appointed in office, wishing it had been 
otherwise." The interview had evidently been stormy, and Parker 
had been made to feel the full force of Elizabeth's perverseness — 
" I have neither joy of house, land, or name, so abased by my nat- 
ural sovereign good lady ; for whose service and honor I would not 
think it cost to spend my life" — and he even goes so far as to 
threaten resistance — " I would be sorry that the clergy should have 
cause to show disobedience, with ojportet Deo obedire magis quam 
hominibus. And what instillers soever there be, there be enough 
of this contemned flock, which will not shrink to offer their blood to 
the defence of Christ's verity, if it be either openly impugned or 
secretly suggilled." 1 Evidently, before Parker could have been 
driven to such scarcely covered threats, there must have been an 
intimation by the angry queen that she would recall the permission 
to marry, which, in the existing state of the law, she could readily 
have done. 

The same spirit which rendered the marriage of a pastor dependent 
on the approbation of the neighboring squires caused the retention 
of ancient rules, which prove the profound distrust still entertained 
as to the discretion and morality of the clergy, and the difficulty 



1 Parker's Correspondence, pp. 156-8. 



494 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 

with which the Anglican church threw off the traditions of Catholi- 
cism. Thus, even in 1571, Grindal, Archbishop of York, promul- 
gates a modification of the canon of Nicgea, forbidding the residence 
with unmarried ministers of women under the age of sixty, except 
relatives closely connected by blood. 1 Indeed, in some remote 
corners of the kingdom the old license was kept up. Archbishop 
Parker, about the year 1565, in speaking of the diocese of Bangor, 
states — "I hear that diocese to be much out of order, both having 
no preaching there and pensionary concubinary openly continued, 
notwithstanding liberty of marriage granted." 2 It evidently required 
time to accustom the clergy to the substitution of the new privileges 
for the old. 

Although sacerdotal marriage was now fully sanctioned by the 
organic canon law of the church, yet it was still exposed to serious 
impediments of a worldly character. When thus frowned upon by 
her who was in reality, if not in name, Supreme Head of the church ; 
when the wife of the primate himself could be exposed to such indelible 
impertinence ; when the marriage of every unfortunate parson was 
subjected to degrading conditions, and when it was assumed that his 
bride must be a woman at service, the influences affecting the matri- 
monial alliances of the clergy must have been of the worst descrip- 
tion. The higher classes of society would naturally model their 
opinions on those of the sovereign, while the lower orders had not as 
yet shaken off the prejudices in favor of celibacy, implanted in them 
by the custom of centuries. Making due allowance for polemical 
bitterness, there is therefore no doubt much truth in the sarcastic 
account which Sanders gives of the wives of the Elizabethan clergy. 
Taking advantage of the refusal of Parliament to formally legalize 
such marriages — a refusal which could not but greatly affect the 
minds of the people — he assumes that the wives were concubines 
and the children illegitimate in the eyes of the law ; consequently 
decent women refused to undergo the obloquy attached to a union 
with a minister of the church, who was therefore forced to take as 
his spouse any one who would consent to accept him. The wives of 
prelates were ostracized ; not received at court, and sharing in no 
way the dignities of their husbands, they were kept closely at home 
for the mere gratification of animal passion. The members of uni- 
versities had been wholly unsuccessful in their efforts to obtain the 



1 Wilkins IV. 269. 2 Parker's Correspondence, p. 259. 



DISREPUTE OF CLERICAL MARRIAGE. 



495 



same license, which was only granted to the heads of colleges, under 
condition that their wives should reside elsewhere, and should rarely 
pollute with their presence the learned precincts. 1 

The accuracy of this sarcastic description is confirmed by a state- 
ment made by Percival Wiburn for the benefit of his friends in 
Zurich, subsequent to the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles. He 
asserts that "The marriage of priests was counted unlawful in the 
times of queen Mary, and was also forbidden by a public statute of 
the realm, which is also in force at this day ; although by permission 
of queen Elizabeth clergymen may have their wives, provided only 
they marry by the advice and assent of the bishop and two justices 
of the peace, as they call them. The lords bishops are forbidden to 
have their wives with them in their palaces ; as are also the deans, 
canons, presbyters, and other ministers of the church, within colleges, 
or the precincts of cathedral churches." 2 It is not a little curious, 



1 Qui autem istis darent filias suas, 
ne protestantes quidem fere invenieban- 
tur, nedum Catholici : primum quia 
existimant id esse per se infame, ut sint 
vel dicantur uxores presbyterorum. 
Secundo, quia juxta leges regni non 
sunt adhuc vera sed adulterina con- 
jugia, ac proinde proles illegitima. 
Tertio quia non accrescit his uxoribus 
aut liberis suis ex maritorum loco aut 
honore in Republica ulla dignitas aut 
existimatio, quod est contra naturam 
veri matrimonii. Non enim Archiepis- 
copus, Episcopus, aliusve hodie prselatus 
in Anglia si sit conjugatus, tribuit 
quicquam ex eo honoris vel promin- 
entia uxori suae, non magis quam si 
esset ejus tantum concubina. Hinc sit 
ut nee eas Elizabetha in aulam, nee 
principum uxores in consortium ullo 
modo admittant, ne Archiepiscoporum 
quidem vocatas conjuges ; sed debent 
eas mariti domi continere, pro vasis 
tantem libidinis aut necessitatis sua?. 
Qua? istis ergo conditionibus, vel sum- 
mis praslatis conjungerentur, cum hon- 
estiores paucse aut nulla? reperiebantur, 
quas poterant habere accipere fuit 
necesse. Sed et aliis modis utcumque 
istorum hominum cupiditati per magis- 
tratum civilem impositum est frsenum. 
Nam et Collegiorum alumni qui in 
Anglicani s universitatibus admodum 
multi erant, otioque ac saturitate panis 
abundabant, ac admodum provecti 
aetate erant, cupiebant et ipsi habere 



uxores ; sed videbatur inconveniens, et 
id privilegii Collegiorum tantum Rec- 
toribus concessum est, cum hac tamen 
exceptione, ut conjuges seorsim plerun- 
que extra Collegia constituant, rarius- 
que eas intromittant. — De Schismate 
Anglicano Lib. III. (Ingoldstat. 1586, 
p. 300). 

See also Florimund. Raemund. Histor. 
Memoral. Lib. vi. cap. xii. 

Of course much allowance must be 
made for the statements of so keen a 
partisan as Sanders, and one who had 
suffered so much from those whom he 
satirized, yet he was a man of too much 
shrewdness to make statements which 
his contemporaries could recognize as 
entirely destitute of foundation. 

Even to this day the position of the 
wives of the Anglican prelates is made 
a subject of ridicule by Catholic pole- 
mics. A recent Italian tract entitled 
" II Celibato del sacerdozio Cattolico " 
remarks " Osservate piuttosto le mogli 
de' vescovi e degli arcivescovi Angli- 
cani, tenute esse in conto di concubine 
non hanno posto alcuno nella civile 
societa." — Panzini, Confessione di un 
Prigioniero, p. 472. 

2 Zurich Letters, Second Series, p. 
359 (Parker Society, 1845). Wiburn 
was deprived for non-conformity in 
1564, so that this must have been 
written subsequently (Strype's Life of 
Grindal, p. 98). 



496 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 



indeed, to observe that in spite of the formal declaration in the 
Thirty-nine Articles, the absence of a special act of Parliament long 
caused the question to remain a doubtful one in the public mind. 
As late as July, 1566, Lawrence Humphrey and Thomas Sampson, 
two zealous Protestants, in denouncing " some straws and chips of 
the popish religion ' ' which still defaced the Anglican church, state 
that "the marriage of the clergy is not allowed and sanctioned by 
the public laws of the kingdom, but their children are by some 
persons regarded as illegitimate;" in answer to which, Bishops 
Grindal and Horn rejoined that "the wives of the clergy are not 
separated from their husbands, and their marriage is esteemed honor- 
able by all, the papists always excepted." 1 The matter evidently 
was still regarded as a subject of controversy, not yet decided 
beyond appeal; and the experience of the previous quarter of a 
century had accustomed men to too many vicissitudes for them to 
feel safe with so slender a guarantee as the Articles afforded. The 
Catholics still constituted a very large proportion of the population, 
and they scarcely concealed their feelings towards the innovation. 
When Sir John Bourne quarrelled with Dr. Sandys, Bishop of Wor- 
cester, among the formal articles of accusation which he presented to 
the Privy Council was the assertion that the Bishop in a sermon 
had ridiculed celibacy and had decried the virtue of unmarried 
priests. 2 The knight apparently believed that this would be damag- 
ing to the bishop, and the latter seems likewise to have thought so, for 
in his answer he emphatically denied it, retorting that his adversary 
was a papist who had mass celebrated in his house and who was in 
the habit of applying the most opprobrious epithets to the wives of 
priests. 3 So when in 1569 the Catholics of the North rose in insur- 
rection under the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, one 
of the grievances of which they complained was the marriage of the 



1 Zurich. Letters, First Series, pp. 
164, 179. 

2 " That, concerning Virginity and 
the Single Life, he handled the case so 
finely that to his thinking, if he should 
have believed him, he could not find 
three good Virgins since Christ's time. 
And that so he left the Matter with an 
Exhortation to all to Mary, Mary. 
Further, That he said in that Sermon 
that single-living Men, that is to say 
unmaried, and especially unmaried 
priests, lived naught. And that there 



in that City were lately presented five 
or six unmaried priests that kept five 
or six whores apiece ; though there were 
not above four unmaried priests in the 
City in all." — Strype's Annals, I. 849. 

3 " "Where he alledgeth that he never 
called Priests "Wives Whores, it is un- 
true. For three Women going through 
his Park, wherein is a path for footmen, 
he supposing they had been Priests 
Wives called unto them, Ye shall not 
come through my Park and no such 
Priests Whores." — Ibid. p. 358. 



EFFECTS ON THE ANGLICAN - CLERGY. 



497 



ministers of Christ. 1 During the whole of this transition period the 
question was evidently one which occupied largely the public mind, 
and in the diversity of opinion it was not easy to see what the ulti- 
mate decision might be. When an irrevocable step such as marriage 
was legal only during the pleasure of a capricious woman, whose 
assent was known to have been extorted from her, it is no wonder 
that it should be looked upon with disfavor by all prudent relatives 
of women inclined to venture on it. 

Such a state of feeling could not but react most injuriously on the 
character of the great body of the clergy. It deprived them of the 
respect due to their sacred calling, and consequently reduced them 
to the level of such scant respect as was accorded to them. How 
long this lasted, and how materially it degraded the ministers of 
Christ as a body, cannot be questioned by any one who recalls the 
description of the rural clergy in the brilliant third chapter of 
Macaulay's History of England. In 1686 an author complains that 
the rector is an object of contempt and ridicule for all above the rank 
of the neighboring peasants ; that gentle blood would be held pol- 
luted by any connection with the church, and that girls of good 
family were taught with equal earnestness not to marry clergymen, 
nor to sacrifice their reputation by amourous indiscretions — -two mis- 
fortunes which were commonly regarded as equal. 2 

Thus eagerly accepted and grudgingly bestowed, the privilege 
of marriage established itself in the Church of England by con- 
nivance rather than as a right; and the evil influences of the preju- 
dices thus fostered were not extinguished for generations. 



1 See a tract published against the 
rebels, attributed by Strype to Sir 
Thomas Smith, which ridicules the 
advocates of celibacy with a vigor 
reminding us of the Beggars' Petition. 
— " This is a quarrel wholly like the old 
Eebels Complaint of Enclosing of 
Commons. Many of your Disordered 
and evil disposed Wives are much 
agrieved that Priests, which were wont 
to be Common be now made Several. 
Hinc illce lachrymce. There is Grief 
indeed, and Truth it is, and so shall 
you iind it. Few Women storm against 
the marriage of priests, calling it un- 
lawful and incensing Men against it, 
but such as have been Priests Harlots 
or fain would be. Content your Wives 
yourselves and let Priests have their 
own." — Strype's Annals, 1.558. 



2 A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque 
artificum farragine, ecclesise rector aut 
vicarius contemnitur et fit ludibrio. 
Gentis et familia? nitor sacris ordinibus 
pollutus censetur: fceminisque natalitio 
insignibus unicum inculcatur ssepius 
praeceptum, ne modestia? naufragium 
faciant, aut (quod idem auribus tarn 
delicatulis sonat) ne clerico se nuptas dari 
patiantur. — T. Wood, Angliee JSTotitia 
(Macaulay's Hist. Engl. Chap. in.). 

Lord Macaulay attributes the de- 
graded position of the clergy to their 
indigence and want of influence. 
These causes doubtless had their effect, 
but the peculiar repugnance towards 
clerical marriage ascribed to all respect- 
able women had a deeper origin than 
simply the beggarly stipends attached 
to the majority of English livings. 



32 



XXVII. 

CALVINISM 



When John Calvin formulated the system of theology which hears 
his name, sacerdotal marriage had already become recognized as one 
of the necessary incidents of the revolt against Rome. That the 
French Huguenots should accept it accordingly was therefore a 
matter of course. Calvin himself manifested his contempt for all 
the ancient prejudices by marrying, in 1539, Idelette de Bure, the 
widow of the Anabaptist Jean Stordeur, whom he had converted. 1 
The Huguenot Confession of Faith was drawn up by him, and was 
adopted by the first national synod, held at Paris in 1559. Of course 
the Genevan views of justification swept away all the accumulated 
observances of sacerdotalism, and ascetic celibacy shared the fate of 
the rest. 2 The discipline of the Calvinist church with regard to 
the morality of its ministers was necessarily severe. The peculiar 
purity expected of a pastor's household was shown by the rule which 
enjoined any church officer whose wife was convicted of adultery to 



1 Rahlenbeck, L'Eglise de Liege, p. 
49. The stern and self-centred soul 
•which won for Idelette the hand of 
Calvin was unshaken to the last, as 
may be seen by his curious account of 
her death-bed, in a letter to Earel 
(Calvini Epistolse, p. 111. Genevse, 
1617). His grief was doubtless sincere, 
but his friends were able to compliment 
him on his not allowing domestic af- 
fliction to interfere with his customary 
routine of labor (Ibid. p. 116). 

2 I have not access to the original, 
but quote the following from Quick's 
" Synodicon in Gallia Keformata," 
London, 1692— " Art. xxiv. ... We 
do also reject those means which men 
presumed they had, whereby they 
might be redeemed before God ; for 
they derogate from the satisfaction of 



the Death and Passion of Jesus Christ. 
Finally, "We hold Purgitory to be none 
other than a cheat, which came out of 
the same shop : from which also pro- 
ceeded monastical vows, pilgrimages, 
prohibition of marriage and the use of 
meats, a ceremonious observation of 
days, auricular confession, indulgences, 
and all other such matters, by which 
Grace and Salvation may be supposed 
to be deserved. Which things we 
reject, not only for the false opinion of 
merit which was affixed to them, but 
also because they are the inventions of 
men, and are a yoke laid by their sole 
authority upon conscience" (Quick I. 
xi.). — See also the Confession written by 
Calvin in 1562, to be laid before the 
Emperor Ferdinand (Calvini Epist. pp. 
564-66). 



THE HUGUENOTS. 



499 



dismiss her absolutely, under pain of deposition, while laymen, under 
such circumstances, were exhorted to be reconciled to their guilty 
partners. 1 Any lapse from virtue on the part of a minister was 
visited with peremptory deposition ; 2 nor was this a mere idle threat 
such as were too many of the innumerable decrees of the Catholic 
councils quoted above, for the proceedings of various synods show 
that it was carried sternly into execution. A list of such vagrant 
and deposed ministers was even kept and published to the churches, 
with personal descriptions of the individuals, that they might not be 
able to impose on the unwary. Indeed, the national synod of Lyons, 
in 1563, went so far as to punish those ministers who brought con- 
tempt upon the church by unfitting marriages ; 3 and, though this was 
omitted from the final code of discipline, it shows the exceeding 
strictness with which the internal economy of the ecclesiastical 
establishment of the Huguenots was regulated. 

The relations of the Catholic church with its apostates were some- 
what confused, and they varied with the political exigencies of the 
situation. Ecclesiastics who left the Catholic communion did not 
hesitate to enter into matrimony ; 4 and when the desolation of civil 
war rendered a forced tolerance of the new religion necessary, their 
position was a source of considerable debate, varying with the fluctu- 
ations of the tangled politics of the time. The Edict of Pacification 
of Amboise, in March, 1562, was held by the Huguenots to legalize 
the marriages of these apostates, but the explanatory declaration of 
August, 1563, ordered their reclamation by the church under pain 
of exile. When the Spanish alliance gave fresh assurances of tri- 
umph to the Catholics this was enforced with increased severity. 
The Edict of Roussillon, in 1564, commands that all priests, monks, 
and nuns, who had abandoned their profession and entered into mat- 
rimony, shall sunder their unhallowed bonds and return to their 



1 Discip. Chap. xin. can. xxviii. 
(Quick, I. liii.). 

2 Ibid. Chap. I. can. xlvii. 

3 Chap. iy. Art. xii., Chap. xvi. 
Art. xiv. (Quick, I. 32, 38). 

4 Prelates of high position were not 
wanting to the list of married men. 
Carracioli, Bishop of Troyes, and Spi- 
fame, Bishop of Nevers, were of the 
number. Jean de Monluc, Bishop of 
Valence (brother of the celebrated 
Marshal Blaise de Monluc, whose cru- 



elties to the Huguenots were so noto- 
rious), married without openly aposta- 
tizing, and died in the Catholic faith. 
Cardinal Odet de Chatillon, Bishop of 
Beauvais, and brother of the Admiral, 
became a declared Calvinist, married 
Mdlle. de Hauteville, and called him- 
self Comte de Beauvais. He seems 
to have retained his benefices, and was 
still called by the Catholics M. le 
Cardinal, " Car il nous estoit fort a 
cceur," says Brantome (Discours 48), 
" de luy changer le nom qui luy avoit 
este si bien seant." 



500 



CALVINISM 



duties. Recalcitrants were required to leave the kingdom within 
two months, under pain, in the case of men, of condemnation to the 
galleys for life, and in that of women, of perpetual imprisonment. 1 
As most of the Calvinist ministers necessarily belonged to the class 
thus assailed, the effect of this legislation in stimulating the troubles 
of the kingdom can readily be perceived. 

The dismal strife of the succeeding ten years at length showed 
that, in spite of the Tridentine canons, the toleration of this iniquity 
was a necessity. Thus in the Edicts of Pacification issued by Henry 
III. in 1576 and 1577 there is a provision which admits as valid 
the marriages theretofore contracted by all priests or religious persons 
of either sex. The issue of such unions was declared competent to 
inherit the personalty of the parents and such realty as either parent 
might have acquired, but was incapable of other inheritance, direct 
or collateral. 2 

The church was forced to submit to this temporizing tolerance 
of evil, and condescended to entreaty since force was no longer per- 
mitted. In 1581, the council of Rouen, while deploring the number 
of monks and nuns who had left their convents, apostatized and 
married, directs that they shall be tempted back, treated with kind- 
ness, and pardon be sought for them from the Holy See. 3 In the 
final settlement of the religious troubles, the concessions made by 
Henry III. were renewed and somewhat amplified by the Edict of 
Nantes in 1598. 4 When the reaction came, however, these pro- 
visions were held to be only retrospective in their action, and were 
not admitted as legalizing subsequent marriages. Thus in 1628 a 
knight of Malta, in 1630 a nun, and in 1640 a priest of Severs, 
who had embraced Calvinism, ventured on matrimony, but were 
separated from their spouses and the marriages were pronounced 
null. 5 These decisions were based on the principle that the celibacy 
of ecclesiastics was prescribed by municipal as well as by canon law, 
and that a priest in abjuring his religion did not escape from the 
obligations imposed upon him by the laws of the kingdom. 6 



1 Edit de Koussillon, Art. 7 (Isam- 
bert, Anciennes Lois Prangaises, XV. 
172). This edict was cited in the pro- 
ceedings of the case of Dumonteil, 
about the year 1830, of which more 
hereafter. 

2 Edit de 1576, Art. 9. —Edit de 
Poitiers, Art. Secrets, No. 8 (Isam- 
bert, T. XV. pp. 283, 331). 



3 Concil. Eotomag. ann. 1581 cap. 
de Monasteriis $ 32 (Harduin. X. 1253). 

4 Edit de Nantes, Art. Secrets, No. 
39 (Isambert, T. XVI. p. 206). 

5 Gregoire, Hist, du Mariage des 
Pretres en Prance, pp. 58-9. 

6 A decision rendered on the argu- 
ment of the distinguished avocat- 



THE SCOTTISH REFORM ATION" 



501 



In Scotland, as in France, the question of sacerdotal marriage 
may be considered as having virtually been settled in advance. Lol- 
lardry had not been confined to the southern portion of Great 
Britain. It had penetrated into Scotland, and had received the 
countenance of those whose position and influence were well calcu- 
lated to aid in its dissemination among the people. In 1494, thirty 
of these heretics, known as "the Lollards of Kyle," were prosecuted 
before James IV. by Robert Blacater, Archbishop of Glasgow. Their 
station may be estimated from the fact that they escaped the punish- 
ment due to their sins by the favor of the monarch, a for divers of 
them were his great familiars." The thirty-four articles of accusation 
brought against them are mostly Wickliffite in tendency, and their 
views on the question of celibacy are manifested in the twenty-second 
article which accuses them of asserting " That Priests may have 
wives according to the constitution of the Law and of the Primitive 
Christian Church." 1 

The soil was thus ready for the plough of the Reformation ; while 
the temper of the Scottish race gave warrant that when the mighty 
movement should reach them, it would be marked by that stern and 
uncompromising spirit which alone could satisfy conscientious and 
fiery bigots, who would regard all half-measures as pacts with Satan. 
Nor was there lacking ample cause to excite in the minds of all men 
the desire for a sweeping and effectual reform. Corruption had ex- 
tended through every fibre of the Scottish church as foul and as 
all-pervading as that which we have traced throughout the rest of 
Christendom. 

Not long after the year 1530, and before the new heresy had 
obtained a foothold, William Arith, a Dominican, ventured to assail 
the vices of his fellow churchmen. In a sermon preached at St. 
Andrews, with the approbation of the heads of the universities, he 
alluded to the false miracles with which the people were deceived, 
and the abuses practised at shrines to which credulous devotion was 
invited. " As of late dayes," he proceeded, "our Lady of Karsgreng 
hath hopped from one green hillock to another: But, honest men of 
St. Andrewes, if ye love your wives and daughters, hold them at 



general Omer Talon expressly states 
"que la prohibition du mariage des 
personnes constitutes dans les ordres 
etant^uneloi de l'Etat aussi bien que 
de l'Eglise, un pretre malgre sa pro- 
fession de Calvinisrae, etait demeure 
sujet aux lois de l'Etat, et des lors 



n'avait pas pu valableraent ,contracter 
mariage." — Bouhier de l'Ecluse, de 
l'Etat des Pretres en France, Paris, 
1842, p. 12. 

1 Knox, History of the ^Reformation 
in Scotland, p. 3 (Ed. 1G09). 



502 



CALVINISM. 



home, or else send them in good honest company; for if ye knew 
what miracles were wrought there, ye would thank neither God nor 
our Lady." In another sermon, arguing that the disorders of the 
clergy should be subjected to the jurisdiction of the civil authorities, 
he introduced an anecdote respecting Prior Patrick Hepburn, after- 
wards Bishop of Murray. That prelate once, in merry discourse 
with his gentlemen, asked of them the number of their mistresses, 
and what proportion of the fair dames were married. The first who 
answered confessed to five, of whom two were bound in wedlock ; the 
next boasted of seven, with three married women among them ; and 
so on until the turn came to Hepburn himself, who, proud of his 
bonnes fortunes, declared that although he was the youngest man 
there, his mistresses numbered twelve, of whom seven were men's 
wives. 1 Yet Arith was a good Catholic, who, on being driven from 
Scotland for his plain speaking, suffered imprisonment in England 
under Henry VIII. for maintaining the supremacy of the pope. 

How little concealment was thought requisite with regard to these 
scandals is exemplified in the case of Alexander Ferrers, which 
occurred about the same time. Taken prisoner by the English and 
immured for seven years in the Tower of London, he returned home 
to find that his wife had been consoled and his substance dissipated 
in his absence by a neighboring priest, for the which cause he not 
unnaturally "spake more liberally of priests than they could bear." 
By this time, heresy was spreading, and severe measures of repres- 
sion were considered necessary. It therefore was not difficult to 
have the man's disrespectful remarks construed as savoring of Luther- 
anism, and he was accordingly brought up for trial at St. Andrews. 
The first article of accusation read to him was that he despised the 
Mass, whereto he answered, " I heare more Masses in eight dayes 
than three bishops there sitting say in a yeare." The next article 
accused him of contemning the sacraments. "The priests," replied 
he, "were the most contemnors of the sacraments, especially of mat- 
rimony." "And that he witnessed by many of the priests there 
present, and named the man's wife with whom they had meddled, 
and especially Sir John Dungwaill, who had seven years together 
abused his own wife and consumed his substance, and said: because 
I complain of such injuries, I am here summoned and accused as one 



1 Knox, pp. 15-16. — Calderwood's Historie of the Kirk of Scotland, I. 83-5 
(Wodrow Soc). 



THE SCOTTISH KEFORM ATION. 



503 



that is worthy to be burnt: For God's sake, said he, will ye take 
wives of your own, that I and others whom ye have abused may be 
revenged on you." Old Gawain Dunbar, Bishop of Aberdeen, not 
relishing this public accusation, sought to justify himself, exclaiming, 
"Carle, thou shalt not know my wife;" but the prisoner turned the 
tables on him, "My lord, ye are too old, but by the grace of God I 
shall drink with your daughter or I depart." "And thereat there 
was smiling of the best and loud laughter of some, for the bishop had 
a daughter married with Andrew Balfour in that town." The pre- 
lates who sat in judgment found that they were exchanging places 
with the accused, and, fearful of further revelations from the reckless 
Alexander, commanded him to depart; but he refused, unless each 
one should contribute something to replace the goods which his wife's 
paramour had consumed, and finally, to stop his evil tongue, they 
paid him and bade him begone. 1 

All prelates, however, were not so sensitive. When Cardinal 
Beatoun, Archbishop of St. Andrews, primate of Scotland, and 
virtual governor of the realm, about the year 1546 married his eldest 
daughter to the eldest son of the Earl of Crawford, he caused the 
nuptials to be celebrated with regal magnificence, and in the marriage 
articles, signed with his own hand, he did not hesitate to call her 
"my daughter." It is not difficult, therefore, to credit the story that 
the night before his assassination was passed with his mistress, Marion 
Ogilby, who was seen leaving his chamber not long before Norman 
Leslie and Kirkaldy of Grange forced their way into his castle. 2 His 
successor in the see of St. Andrews, John Hamilton, was equally 
notorious for his licentiousness ; and men wondered, not at his im- 
morality, but at his taste in preferring to all his other concubines one 
whose only attraction seemed to be the zest given to sin by the fact 
that she was the wife of one of his kindred. 3 

This is testimony from hostile witnesses, and we might perhaps 
impugn their evidence on that ground, were it not that the Catholic 
Church of Scotland itself admitted the abandoned morals of its mem- 
bers when the rapid progress of Calvinism at length drove it in self- 
defence to attempt a reform which was its only chance of salvation. 
In the last Parliament held by James V. before his death in 1542, 
an act was passed exhorting the prelates and ecclesiastics in general 



1 Knox, pp. 16-17. 

2 Buchanan. Ker. Scot. Hist. Lib. 



xv. — Kobertson, Hist of Scot. B. II. 
Knox, 71-2.— Calderwood I. 222. 

3 Buchanan. Lib. xv. 



504 CALVINISM. 

to take measures "for reforming of ther lyvis, and for avoyding of 
the opin sclander that is gevin to the haill estates throucht the spirit- 
ual e mens ungodly and dissolut lyves." 1 Nothing was then done in 
spite of this solemn warning, though the countenance afforded to the 
Reformers by the Regent Arran, strengthened by his alliance with 
Henry VIII., was daily causing the heresy to assume more dangerous 
proportions. When, therefore, the Catholic party, rallying after the 
murder of Cardinal Beatoun, at length triumphed with the aid of 
France, and sent the young Queen of Scots to marry Francis II., 
they seemed to recognize that they could only maintain their advant- 
age by meeting public opinion in endeavoring to reform the church. 
Accordingly, in November, 1549, a council was convoked at Edin- 
burgh, of which the first canon declares that the licentiousness of the 
clergy had given rise to the gravest scandals, to repress which the 
rules enjoined by the council of Bale must be strictly enforced and 
universally obeyed. The second canon is no less significant in order- 
ing that prelates and other ecclesiastics shall not live with their ille- 
gitimate children, nor provide for them or promote them in the 
paternal churches, nor marry their daughters to barons by endowing 
them with the patrimony of Christ, nor cause their sons to be made 
barons by the same means. 2 

This was of small avail. Ten years afterwards, the progress of 
heresy becoming ever more alarming, another council was held, in 
March, 1559, to devise means to put a stop to the encroachments of 
the enemy. To this assembly the Catholic nobles addressed an 
earnest prayer for reformation. After alluding to the proceedings 
of the Parliament of 1542, they add, "And siclyk remembring in 
diverss of the lait provinciale counsales haldin within this realm, that 
poynt has been treittet of, and sindrie statutis synodale maid ther- 
upon, of the quhilks nevertheless thar hes folowit nan or litiil fruitt 
as yitt, bot rathare the said estate is deteriorate ... it is maist 
expedient therefore that thai presentlie condescend to seik reforma- 
tion of thir lyvis . . . and naymlie that oppin and manifest sins and 
notor offencis be forborn and abstenit fra in tyme to cum." In this 
request they had been anticipated by the Reformers, who, the pre- 
vious year, in a supplication addressed to the queen-regent, included 
amoM their demands "That the wicked, slanderous and detestable 



i Wilkins IV. 207. 

2 Concil. Edinburgens. ann. 1549 can. 1, 2 ( Wilkins IY. 48). 



THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION. 



505 



life of Prelats and of the State Ecclesiastical! may be reformed, that 
the people by them have not occasion (as of many dayes they have 
had) to contemne their Ministrie and the Preaching whereof they 
should be Messengers." 

The council, thus urged by friend and foe, recognized the extreme 
necessity of the case, and did its best to cure the immedicable disease. 
Its first canon reaffirmed the observance of the Basilian regulations, 
and appointed a commission empowered to enforce them ; and, that 
nothing should interfere with its efficiency, the Archbishops of St. 
Andrews and Glasgow made a special renunciation of their exemp- 
tion from the jurisdiction of the council. The second canon, in for- 
bidding the residence of illegitimate children with their clerical fathers, 
endeavored to procure obedience to the rule ordered by the council of 
1549, by permitting it for four days in each quarter, and by a penalty 
for infractions of £200 in the case of an archbishop, X100 in that of 
a bishop, and leaving the mulct to be imposed on inferior ecclesiastics 
at the discretion of the officials. The third canon prohibited the pro- 
motion of children in their father's benefices, and supplicated the 
queen-regent to obtain of the pope that no dispensations should be 
granted to evade the rule. The fourth canon inhibited ecclesiastics 
from marrying their daughters to barons and lairds, and endowing 
them with church lands, or making their sons barons or lairds with 
more than £100 annual income, under pain of fine to the amount of 
the dowry or lands abstracted from the church; and all grants of 
church lands or tithes to concubines or children were pronounced null 
and void. 1 

When such legislation was necessary, the disorders which it was 
intended to repress are acknowledged in terms admitting neither of 
palliation nor excuse. The extent of the evil especially alluded to in 



1 Wilkins IY. 207-10.— Knox, p. 
129. It should be borne in mind in 
estimating these penalties that they are 
expressed in pounds Scots, which were 
about one-twelfth of the pound sterling. 
These canons, it appears, were not 
adopted without opposition. Accord- 
ing to Knox, " But herefrom appealed 
the Bishop of Murray and other pre- 
lates, saying That they would abide the 
canon law. And so they might well 
enough do, so long as they remained 
Interpreters, Dispensators, Makers and 
Disannullers of the law " (Op. cit. 
119). It was doubtless on some such 



considerations that the Archbishop of 
St. Andrews relied when he consented 
to waive his exemption in this matter. 
His personal reputation may be esti- 
mated from the remark of Queen Mary 
when, in December, 1566, he performed 
the rite of baptism on James VI. She 
forbade him to use the popular cere- 
mony of employing his saliva, giving a 
reason which was in the highest degree 
derogatory to his moral character 7 Sir 
J. Y. Simpson, in Proceedings of Epi- 
demiological Society of London, Nov. 
5th, 1860). 



506 



CALVINISM. 



the latter canons is further exemplified by the fact that during the 
thirty years immediately following the establishment of the Reforma- 
tion in Scotland, more letters of legitimation were taken out than 
were issued in the subsequent two centuries. These were given to 
the sons of the clergy who were allowed to retain their benefices, and 
who then made over the property to their natural children. 1 

Such being the state of morals among the ministers of the old 
religion, it is easy to appreciate the immense advantage enjoyed by 
the Reformers. They made good use of it. Knox loses no oppor- 
tunity of stigmatizing the "pestilent Papists and Masse-mongers " as 
" adulterers and whoremasters," who were thus perpetually held up 
to the people for execration, while the individual wrongs from which 
so many suffered were noised about and made the subject of con- 
stantly-increasing popular indignation. 2 Yet the abrogation of 
celibacy occupies less space in the history of the Scottish Reforma- 
tion than in that of any other people who threw off the allegiance to 
Rome. 

The remote position of Scotland and its comparative barbarism 
rendered it in some degree inaccessible to the early doctrines of 
Luther and Zwingli. Before it began to show a trace of the new 
ideas, clerical marriage had long passed out of the region of disputa- 
tion with the Reformers, and was firmly established as one of the 
inseparable results of the doctrine of justification professed by all the 
reformed churches. 3 Not only was it thus accepted as a matter of 



1 Kobertson, Hist. Scot. Bk. II. 

2 Thus the Parliament of 1560, which 
effected a settlement of the Keformed 
Religion, was urged to its duty by a 
Supplication presented in the name of 
"The Barons, Gentlemen, Burgesses, 
and other true Subjects of this Bealm, 
professing the Lord Jesus within the 
same," which, among its arguments 
against Catholicism, does not hesitate 
to assert — " Secondarily, seeing that the 
sacraments of Jesus Christ are most 
shamefully abused and profaned by 
that Bomane Harlot and her sworne 
vassals, and also because that the true 
Discipline of the Ancient Church is 
utterly now among that Sect extin- 
guished : For who within the Kealme 
are more corrupt in life and manners 
than are they that are called the Clergie, 
living in whoredom and adultery, de- 
flouring Virgins, corrupting Matrons, 



and doing all abomination without fear 
of punishment. We humbly, there- 
fore, desire your Honors to finde remedy 
against the one and the other " — Knox, 
p. 255. 

3 This doctrine bore its full share in 
the history of the Scottish reformation. 
Two years after the execution of the 
protomartyr, Patrick Hamilton, in 
1528, his sister Catharine was arraigned 
on account of her belief in justification 
through Christ. Learned divines urged 
upon her with prolix earnestness of 
disputation the necessity of works, until 
her patience gave way, and she rudely 
exclaimed, "Work here and work 
there, what kind of working is all this ? 
No work can save me but the work of 
Christ my Saviour." By the conni- 
vance of the king she was enabled to 
escape to England. — Calderwood's His- 
toric, I. 109. 



THE SCOTTISH KEFOKMATION. 507 

course by all converts to the new faith, but that faith, when once 
introduced, spread in Scotland with a rapidity proportioned to the 
earnest character of the people. The permission to read the Script- 
ures in the vulgar tongue, granted by Parliament in 1543, doubtless 
had much to do with this ; the leaning of the Regent Arran to the 
same side gave it additional impetus, and the savage fierceness with 
which the Reformers were prepared to vindicate their belief is shown 
by the murder of Cardinal Beatoun, which was countenanced and 
justified by Knox himself. Powerful nobles soon saw in it the 
means of emancipating themselves from the vacillating control of the 
regent; nor was the central authority strengthened when, in 1554, 
the reins of power were wrested from the feeble Arran and confided 
to the queen-dowager, Mary of Guise, who found herself obliged to 
encourage each party by turns, and to balance one against the other, 
to prevent either Catholic or Calvinist from obtaining control over 
the state. Then, too, as in Germany and England, the temporal 
possessions of the church were a powerful temptation to its destruc- 
tion. From the great Duke of Chatelleraut to the laird of some 
insignificant peel, all were needy and all eager for a share in the 
spoil. When, in 1560, an assembly of the nobles at Edinburgh 
listened to a disputation on the Mass, and the Catholic doctors were 
unable to defend it as a propitiatory sacrifice, the first exclamation of 
the lords revealed the secret tendencies of their thoughts — "We have 
been miserably deceived heretofore ; for if the Mass may not obtain 
remission of sins to the quick and to the dead, Wherefore were all 
the Abbies so richly doted and endowed with our Temporall lands?" 1 
Of course less selfish purposes were put forward to enlist the 
support of the people. On the 1st of January, 1559, when the 
storm was gathering, but before it had burst, the inmates of the 
religious houses found affixed to their gates a proclamation in the 
name of a The Blinde, Crooked, Lame, Widows, Orphans, and all 
other Poor, so visited by the hand of God as cannot work," ordering 
the monks to leave the patrimony intended to relieve the suffering, 
but usurped by indolent shavelings, giving them until Whit-Sunday 
to make their exit, after which they would be ejected by force, and 
ending with the significant warning — " Let him, therefore, that hath 
before stolen, steal no more, but rather let him work with his hands 
that he may be helpfull to the poore." 2 



1 Knox, p. 283. 2 Knox, p. 119.— Calderwood, I. 423. 



508 



CALVINISM. 



Such a cry could hardly fail to be popular, but when the threat 
was carried into execution, the blind and the crooked, the widow 
and orphan received so small a share of the spoil that they were 
worse off than before. As we have already seen in England, the 
destruction of the Scottish monasteries was the commencement of the 
necessity of making some public provision for paupers. 1 The nobles 
seized the lion's share ; the rest fell to the crown, subject to the pay- 
ment of the very moderate stipends assigned to the comparatively few 
ministers required by the new establishment, and these stipends were 
so irregularly paid that the unfortunate ministers were frequently in 
danger of starvation, and were constantly besieging the court with 
their dolorous complaints. Where the lands and revenues went is 
indicated with grim humor by Knox, in describing the resistance 
offered in 1560 to the adoption of his Book of Discipline by those 
who had professed great zeal for the Lord Jesus. Lord Erskine had 
been one of the first and most consistent of the " Lords of the Con- 
gregation," yet he also refused to sign the book — "And no wonder, 
for besides that he had a very evill woman to his wife, if the Poore, 
the Schooles, and the Ministerie of the Church had their owne, his 
Kitchin would lack two parts and more of that which he unjustly 
now possesseth." 2 

Yet, when compared with the rich abbatial manors of England or 
the princely foundations of Germany, the spoil of the church was 
mean indeed. Knox had resided much abroad, and had seen the 
vast wealth which the piety of ages had showered upon the church 
in the most opulent lands of Europe, yet his simplicity or fanaticism 
finds source of wondering comment in the homespun luxury of the 
unfortunate monks whom he assisted in dispossessing. When the de- 
struction of the monasteries in 1559 commenced by a brawl in Perth, 
caused by a sermon preached by Knox, and three prominent con- 
vents were broken up, he expatiates on the extravagance revealed to 
sight — "And in very deed the Grey-Friers was a place so well pro- 



1 Thus the assembly of the church 
in 1562 drew up a remonstrance to the 
queen, in which they requested that 
"in every Parish some of the Tythes 
may be assigned to the sustentation 
and maintenance of the poor within 
the same : And likewise that some 
publike relief may be provided for the 
poor within Burroughs" — Knox, p. 
339. 



2 Ibid. p. 278. The Book was signed 
at Edinburgh, Jan. 27, 1561, but only 
after the adoption of a proviso — "Pro- 
vided that the Bishops, Abbots, Priors 
and other Prelates and Beneficed men, 
which else have adjoyned themselves to 
us, brooke the revenues of their Bene- 
fices during their lifetimes." — Worldly 
wisdom certainly was not lost sight of 
in the ardor of a new and purer religion. 



THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION. 509 

vided that unlesse honest men had seen the same, we would have 
feared to have reported what provision they had, their sheets, blan- 
kets, beds and coverlets were such that no Earle in Scotland had 
better : Their naperie was fine ; they were but 8 persons in the Con- 
vent, and yet they had 8 puncheons of salt beef (consider the time 
of the yeere, the eleventh of May), wine, beere, and ale, beside store 
of victuals belonging thereto." 1 Imagine an abbot of St. Albans 
or an abbess of Poissy reduced to the coverlets and salt beef which 
the stern Calvinist deemed an indulgence so great as to be incredible ! 

Still, in so impoverished a country as the Scotland of that period, 
even these poor spoils were a motive sufficient to prove a powerful 
aid to the conquering party in the struggle. And yet, amid all the 
miserable ambitions of the Erskines and Murrays, the Huntleys and 
Bothwells, who occupied the prominent places in the court and camp, 
we should do grievous wrong to the spirit which triumphed at last 
over the force and fraud of the Guises, if we attributed to temporal 
motives alone the movement which expelled licentious prelates and 
drove Queen Mary to the fateful refuge of Fotheringay. The selfish 
aims of the nobles would have been fruitless but for the zealous 
earnestness of the people, led by men of iron nature, who doubted 
themselves as little as they doubted their God, and who, in the death- 
struggle with Antichrist, were as ready to suffer as they were ruthless 
to inflict. Nor can the disorders of the Catholic clergy be rightly 
imputed to the temperament of the race, for the Reformers, who car- 
ried with them so large a portion of the middle and lower classes, 
preached a system of rigid morality to which the world had been a 
stranger since the virtues of the Germanic tribes had been lost in 
the overthrow of the Empire; and they not merely preached it, but 
obtained its embodiment in a code of repressive laws, which their 
vigilant authority strictly enforced. 

I have said above that the question of celibacy appears but rarely 
in the course of the contest, yet, notwithstanding the causes which 
rendered it a less prominent subject of debate than elsewhere, it 
occasionally rises to view. The first instance of clerical marriage 
that I find recorded occurred in 1538, when Thomas Coklaw, parish 
priest of Tillibodie, married a widow of the same village named 
Margaret Jameson. This, however, was not done openly and defi- 
antly, as in Germany, but in secret, and the married couple con- 



1 Knox, 136. 



510 



CALVINISM, 



tinned to dwell apart. That the infraction of the canons was not 
without danger was shown by the result, for, when it became known, 
Coklaw was tried by the Bishop of Dumblane and condemned to per- 
petual imprisonment ; but his relatives broke open his dungeon and 
he escaped to England. When, early in the following year, a group 
of reformers, including Dean Thomas Forret, Friar John Killore, 
Friar John Beverege, and others, were put on trial, their presence 
at this wedding was one of the crimes for which they were executed 
upon Castle Hill at Edinburgh. 1 In fact, the abrogation of the rule 
of celibacy, in Scotland as elsewhere, was necessarily one of the 
leading points at issue between the Reformers and the Catholics. 
Thus, when George Wishart, one of the early heretics who ventured 
openly to preach the Lord Jesus, was seized, in spite of powerful 
protectors, and after a prolonged captivity was brought for trial before 
Cardinal Beatoun in 1545, in the accusation against him article 14th 
asserted, "Thou false Hereticke hast taught plainly against the Vows 
of Monks, Friers, Nuns, and Priests, saying, That whosoever was 
bound to such like Vows, they vowed themselves to the state of dam- 
nation. Moreover, That it was lawfull for Priests to marry wives 
and not to live sole." Wishart tacitly confessed the truth of this 
impeachment by rejoining — " But as many as have not the gift of 
chastity, nor yet for the Gospel have overcome the concupiscence of 
the flesh, and have vowed chastity; ye have experience, although I 
should hold my tongue, to what inconveniences they have exposed 
themselves." 2 He was accordingly condemned as an incorrigible 
heretic, and promptly burnt. Yet when, in 1547, John Knox held 
his disputation with Dean Wynrame and Friar Arbuckle, though 
the nine articles drawn up for discussion ranged from the supremacy 
of the pope and the existence of purgatory to the payment of tithes, 
the subject of vows of chastity was not even mentioned. 3 

Still, even as late as 1558 the trial of Walter Mill shows that the 
question was even yet agitated in the controversies between the 
polemics of the two parties. Mill had been a priest and had mar- 
ried, and the first of the articles of accusation against him was that 
he asserted the lawfulness of sacerdotal marriage. To this he boldly 
assented, declaring that he regarded matrimony as a blessed bond, 



1 Calderwood's Historie, I. 123-4. 

2 Knox, p. 65. — Knox's characteristic 
comment on this is — "When he had 
said these words, they were all dinnb, 



thinking it better to have ten concu- 
bines than one wife." 

3 Calderwood I. 231 sqq. 



THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION. 



511 



open for all men to enter, and that it were better for priests to marry 
than to vow chastity and not preserve it, as they were wont to do. 
Condemned to the stake, the unfortunate old man commanded the 
sympathies of the people, even in the archiepiscopal town of St. 
Andrews. No one could be found to act as executioner, until at 
length one of the servants of the archbishop consented to fill the 
abhorrent office; but when a rope was sought with which to bind 
the wretched sufferer to the stake, no one would furnish it, and the 
tragedy was necessarily postponed. Equally unsuccessful was the 
next day's search, until the archbishop, fearing to lose his victim, 
gave the cords of his own pavilion, and the sentence was carried into 
effect. Even after the sacrifice, the popular feeling was manifested 
by raising a pile of stones as a monument on the place of torture, 
and as often as these were cast aside by the priests they were replaced 
by the people, until the followers of the archbishop carried them off 
by night, and used them for building. 1 

These incidents show us that the question received its share of 
attention in the controversy by which each side endeavored to secure 
the support of the nation, but it makes no appearance in public 
negotiations and declarations. Thus, in 1558, when the growing- 
strength of the Lords of the Congregation led the Catholics to offer 
concessions, which were rejected by the conscious power of the Re- 
formers, there was no allusion to celibacy on either side. In fact, 
between the respective leaders, the questions were almost purely 
personal and political ; while among the conscientiously religious 
supporters of either party, opinions were too rigidly defined for argu- 
ment. Convictions were too divergent and too firm for compromise 
or concession to be possible, and Catholic and Calvinist grimly 
recognized, as by a tacit understanding, the alternative of extermina- 
tion. When the English alliance at last drove the Catholics to the 
wall, and in July, 1560, there assembled the parliament to which by 
the Articles of Leith was referred the duty of effecting a settlement 
of the kingdom, the vanquished party made no struggle against their 



1 Knox, p. 130.— Calderwood I. 337 
sqq. — Burnet vol. II. The implacable 
character of Scottish persecution is aptly- 
illustrated by a proclamation issued by 
Cardinal Beatoun in 1 540 for the pur- 
pose of spiting Sir Balph Sadler, the 
English envoy at Edinburgh. It was 
during Lent, and the proclamation 
declared ' ' that whosoever should buy 



an egg or eat an egg within those dio- 
ceses should forfeit no less than his body- 
to be burnt as a heretic, and all his 
goods confiscate to the king " — Froude, 
Hist. Engl. IV. 54. 

It was a life and death struggle, in 
which quarter could neither be asked 
nor given. 



512 CALVINISM. 

fate. Such Catholic prelates and lords as took their seats refrained 
from all debate, and allowed the victors to arrange the temporal and 
spiritual affairs of the kingdom at their pleasure. 

In this settlement, our subject affords a curious comparison between 
the English and Scotch churches. In the former, at a period even 
later than this, it was considered necessary to embody a renunciation 
of celibacy in the organic law, which has been maintained to the 
present day. In the latter, ecclesiastical marriage had become 
already so firmly established in the minds of the Reformers that it 
was accepted as a matter of course, which needed no special con- 
firmation. Although laws were passed prohibiting the Mass and 
abolishing the supremacy of the pope, none were thought necessary 
to legalize the marriages of the clergy. Even in Knox's Confession 
of Faith, adopted by the parliament on the 17th of July, there is no 
direct allusion to the matter. The only passage which can be con- 
strued as having any bearing upon it occurs in Chapter XIV., when 
considering "What works are reputed good before God" — "And 
evill works we affirme not onely those that are expressly done against 
God's commandment, but those also that in matters of religion and 
worshipping of God have no assurance, but the invention and opinion 
of man, which God from the beginning hath ever rejected, as by the 
prophet Isaiah and by our Master Christ Jesus we are taught in 
these words — In vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines which 
are precepts of Men. 1 

Nothing more, in fact, was needed when the triumph of the new 
ideas was so complete that Knox could exultingly exclaim, " For 
what Adulterer, what Fornicator, what known Masse-monger or 
pestilent Papist durst have been seen in publike within any Reformed 
Town within this Realme before that the Queen arrived ? . . . For 
while the Papists were so confounded that none within the Realme 
durst avow the hearing or saying of Masse then the thieves of Tid- 
disdale durst avow their stouth or stealing in the presence of any 
upright judge." 2 When persecution thus had changed sides, no 
minister could feel that his nuptials required special authorization. 
How thoroughly, indeed, they were legitimated is shown by a curi- 
ous little incident occurring in 1563. A minister named Baron 
made complaint to the General Assembly that his wife, an English 
woman named Anne Goodacre, "after great rebellions by her com- 

1 Knox, p. 263. 2 Ibid. p. 304. 



THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION. 513 

mitted," had left him and taken refuge in England, whereupon he 
requested the Assembly to have her brought back to him. Spots- 
wood, the Superintendent of Lothian, with Knox and Craig, actually 
wrote to Archbishop Parker officially asking him to have the woman 
sought for and sent to Scotland; but Parker, considering it to be an 
international question and beyond his sphere, prudently referred the 
request to Secretary Cecil. 1 

It were foreign to our object to enter into the dark details of 
Mary's short and disastrous reign. The intrigues of the camarilla, 
the boyish weakness of Darnley, the subtlety of Bizzio, and the 
coarse ambition of Huntley and Bothwell, were alike harmless against 
the earnest reverence of the people for the new faith; and the ex- 
piring struggles of Catholicism were too feeble to give any practical 
importance to the vain attempts at reaction. 



1 Strype's Parker, Book n. ch. xviii. 



33 



XXVIII. 

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 



It lias already been observed that the dissolute and unchristian 
life of the priesthood was one of the efficient causes which led to the 
success of the Reformation. At an early period in the movement, 
the Catholic church felt the necessity of purifying itself, if it was to 
retain the veneration of the people ; and the veneration of the people 
was now not merely a source of revenue, but a condition of the very 
existence of the stupendous structure reared upon the credulity of 
ages. As soon as it became clearly apparent that Lutheranism was 
not to be suppressed by the ordinary machinery, and that it was 
spreading with a rapidity which portended the worst results, an 
effort was made to remove the reproach which incorrigible immo- 
rality had entailed upon the church. Allusion has been made above 
to the stringent measures of reform proclaimed by the legate Cam- 
peggi at Hatisbon, in 1524, in which he acknowledged that the new 
heresy had no little excuse in the detestable morals and abandoned 
lives of the clergy — a truth repeatedly admitted by the ecclesiastical 
authorities. 1 His well-meant endeavors had little result, and we have 



1 The orator of the council of Co- 
logne in 15.27 sharply reminded the 
assembled prelates that they must set 
the example of obeying their own 
statutes, and that they could not expect 
the people to reverence the true church 
so long as it notoriously bade defiance 
to the laws of God and man. " Quasi 
prsescribatur lex cujus sancitor voluerit 
esse exlex. Parendum enim est legi 
quam quisque sancit . . . Audis praet- 
erea non licere plurimas habere uxores, 
quae animum tuum alliciant; non 
decere domi alere tot scorta tot Veneres, 
quae te continue exedunt, tuamque 
substantiam disperdunt. . . . His et 
aliis datur scandalum populo ; prsebetur 



offendiculum vulgo, cui hac tempestate 
vilet et contemptui est ordo quilibet 
sacer. Yilis plebs te sacerdotem nunc 
cachinnis atque ludibriis incessit et odit, 
qui calumniandi ansam ultro prrcbueris. 
Dicit namque : tot hie, aut ille, scorta 
domi suae ex patrimonio Orucifixi nu- 
trit, quo non sordida scorta, sed pau- 
peres Christi forent sustentandi" — 
Concil. Colon, ann. 1527 (Hartzheim 
VI. 210-213). 

So at the council of Augsburg, in 
1548, the orator dwelt upon the ad- 
vantage which the heretics derived from 
the sins of the clergy — " Non estis 
nescii, quemadmodum nos hseretici apud 
populum perpetuo traducant : nos 



DISORDERS OF THE GALLICAN CHURCH 



515 



seen that, some years later, Erasmus still urged the abolition of the 
rule of celibacy as the only practicable mode of removing the scandal. 
Not long afterwards the Gallican church made a strenuous effort 
of the same nature to check the spread of Lutheranism. In 1521, 
before it had to encounter a hostile heresy, the council of Paris had 
deplored the pervading corruptions with exceeding candor. The 
condition of conventual discipline was such as to threaten the very 
existence of the system, and the customary denunciations of inerad- 
icable abuses were freely published. 1 In 1528 the Cardinal-legate 
Duprat, Chancellor of France, held a council in Paris, where he con- 
demned, seriatim, the new doctrines as heresies, and elevated the rule 
of celibacy to the dignity of a point of faith. 2 He also caused the 
adoption of a series of canons designed to remove from the church 
the disgrace caused by the laxity of clerical morals and manners. 
The bishops were instructed to enforce the decrees of the councils 
and of the fathers until concubinage and incontinence should be com- 
pletely exterminated, and a rule was laid down which would have 
been eventually effectual if conscientiously carried out. No one was 
thereafter to be admitted to holy orders without written testimony as 
to his age and moral character from his parish priest, substantiated 
by the oaths of two or three approved witnesses. 3 At the same time 
similar councils were held at Eourges by the Cardinal Archbishop 
Tournon, and at Lyons by Claude, Bishop of Macon. To what 
extent these excellent rules were put in force may be guessed by a 
description of the French clergy in 1560, as portrayed by Monluc, 
Bishop of Valence, in a speech before the royal council. The parish 
priests were for the most part engrossed in worldly pursuits, and had 
obtained their preferment by illicit means, nor did there seem much 
prospect of an improvement so long as the prelates were in the habit 
of bestowing the benefices within their gift on their lackeys, barbers, 



scortatores, nos ambitiosos, nos avaros, 
nos ignavos, et rudes esse, nos otio 
semper, luxui et ventri servire, identi- 
dem vociferantur . . . Superbe itaque 
illi : sed utinam non nimium ssepe 
vere : nam si vera potius hoc loco, 
quam plausibilia, dicenda sint; negare 
certe non possumus, quin maximam ad 
nos accusandos occasionem ssepe de- 
derimus" — Concil. Augustan, ann. 
1548 (Hartzheim VI. 388). 

1 Concil. Parisiens. ann. 1521 (Mar- 
tene Ampl. Coll. VIII. 1018). 



2 Quisquis igitur contra sacrorum 
conciliorum et patrum decreta, sacer- 
dotes, diaconos aut subdiaconos lege 
ccelibatus non teneri docuerit aut libe- 
ras illis concesserit nuptias, inter 
hsereticos, omni tergiversatione re- 
jecta numeretur. — Concil. Paris, ann. 
1528, Decret. 8. 

This, I think, is the first authorita- 
tive promulgation of Damiani's doc- 
trine, which, as we shall hereafter see, 
was adopted and extended by the 
council of Trent. 

3 Ibid. can. 3, 27. 



516 



THE COUNCIL OF TEEKT, 



cooks, and other serving men, rendering the ecclesiastics as a body 
an object of contempt to the people. 1 We need, therefore, not be 
surprised to find in the councils of the period a repetition of all the 
old injunctions, showing that the maintenance of improper consorts 
and the disgrace of priestly families were undiminished evils. 2 This 
description of the French clergy is most emphatically extended to 
the whole church in the project for reformation drawn up by order 
of Paul III. in 1538, and to these evils are attributed the innumer- 
able scandals which afflicted the faithful, as well as the contempt 
in which the ecclesiastical body was held and the virtual extinction 
of all reverence for the services of religion. 3 

In 1530 Clement VII. addressed himself vigorously to the task 
of putting an end to the scandalous practice of hereditary transmis- 
sion of benefices, which he describes as almost universal. A special 
Bull was issued, prohibiting the children of priests or monks from 
enjoying any preferment in their father's benefices, and, recognizing 
that the Roman curia was one of the chief obstacles to all reform, he 
provided that if he or his successors should grant dispensations per- 
mitting such infraction of the canons, they should be considered as 
issued unwittingly, and be held null and void. 4 Like so many others, 
this Bull seems to have been forgotten almost as soon as issued, and 
the pecuniary needs of the Roman court rendered it unable to abandon 
so lucrative a source of revenue. Even as soon as 1538 the cardinals 
to whom Paul III. committed the task of drawing up the project of 
reformation cautiously intimate that they hear of such dispensations 
being granted, and to this they attribute a large share of the troubles 
of the church and the enmity felt towards the Holy See. 5 This 
warning passed unheeded, and, as we have seen, in 1559 a Scottish 
council prayed the queen-regent to use her influence with the pope to 
prevent dispensations being granted to enable illegitimate children 
to hold preferment in their father's benefices, 6 while in 1562 the fre- 



1 Pierre de la Place, Estat de Eel. et 
Kep. Liv. in. 

3 Concil. Narbonnens. ann. 1551 
can. 22 (Harduin. X. 468). 

3 Consilium de Emend. Eccles. (Le 
Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. II. 



* Bull, ad Canonum (Mag. Bull. 
Roman. Ed. 1692, I. 682). 

Alexander III., in prohibiting the 
sons of priests from enjoying their 
fathers' benefices, had permitted it if 



a third party intervened, and a dispen- 
sation for the irregularity were obtained. 
The letter of this law was frequently 
observed, but its spirit eluded by 
nominally passing the preferment 
through the hands of a man of straw, 
and it was this abuse which Clement 
desired to eradicate. 

5 Consilium de Emend. Eccles. (Le 
Plat. Monument. Concil. Trident. II. 
599). 

6 Wilkins IY- 209. 



PAPAL DISPENSATIONS — SPAIN 



517 



quency and readiness with which such dispensations were still obtained 
are enumerated in a list of abuses laid before the council of Trent by 
Sebastian King, of Portugal, as one of the matters requiring refor- 
mation by the supreme power of the council. 1 To this and other 
similar appeals the papal legates loftily replied that laws were not to 
be prescribed to the Holy See; 2 and the motive for the refusal is 
easily comprehended when we see that in the " Taxes of the Peni- 
tentiary" the price for a dispensation admitting the bastard of a 
priest to holy orders was a ducat and a carlino. 3 

In Spain, the most dangerous opponent of the Reformation, Igna- 
tius Loyola, succeeded to some, extent in repressing the public and 
unblushing manifestation of concubinage. His biographer states that 
the female companions of the Peninsular clergy were accustomed to 
pledge their faith to their consorts, as if united by the marriage-tie, 
and that they wore the distinguishing costume of married women, 
as though glorying in their shame. 4 Scandalized by this, on his 
return to his native land, in 1535, Ignatius exerted himself to abolish 
it, together with other priestly peccadilloes, and his influence was 
sufficient to procure the enactment and enforcement by the temporal 
authorities of sundry laws which relieved the Spanish church from 
so great an opprobrium. 5 Yet, though this semi-authorized cohabi- 
tation may have been checked, the custom of notorious concubinage 
continued to flourish. Bernardino Diaz de Luco, a Spanish jurist, 
not long afterwards, deplores the frequency of the vice, but warns 
judges that they should not be over-severe in repressing it, since so 
few are found guiltless, and there is danger that those who are 
restrained from it may be forced into darker sins. 6 



1 Le Plat, V. 88. The opinion which 
was held of the venality of the Roman 
Court in such matters is forcibly ex- 
pressed in the instructions given to 
Lanssac, the French ambassador at 
Trent. He is ordered to press the abo- 
lition of the Papal power of dispen- 
sation " attendu que nul n'en est refuse 
s'il a argent." — Ibid. p. 153. 

2 Ejus sanctitati lex non sit praescrib- 
enda. — Ibid. p. 385. 

3 Tax. Sac. Pcenitent. Ed. (ribbings, 
p. 13. — This was only one carlino (the 
tenth part of a ducat, equal to about 
fourpence), more than the charge for 
the bastard of a layman. 



Seville endeavored to regulate this by 
forbidding certain articles of dress to 
concubines, whether of ecclesiastics or 
laymen. — Wahu, Le Pope et la Societe 
Moderne, Paris, 1879 p. 395. 

5 Ribadeneira Vit. Ignat. Loyol. 
Lib. ii. cap. v. 

Ribadeneira was one of Loyola's 
early disciples, and is therefore good 
authority. His description would show 
that permanent unions were formed, 
respected by the people but not recog- 
nized by the church, in the same man- 
nor as those alluded to by Bishop 
Pelayo, two centuries earlier. 

6 Diaz de Luco, Practica Criminal is 
Canonica cap. lxxiii. (Venetiis, 1543). 



518 THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 

About the same time, Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, 
undertook the reformation of his extensive diocese. He assembled a 
council which issued a series of 275 canons, prescribing minutely the 
functions, duties, and obligations of all grades of the clergy. As 
regards the delicate subject of concubinage, he contented himself 
with quoting the Nicene canon prohibiting the residence of women 
not nearly connected by blood, and added that if the degeneracy of 
the times prevented the enforcement of a regulation so strict, at all 
events he forbade the companionship of females obnoxious to sus- 
picion. 1 The good bishop himself could hardly have expected that 
so mild an allocution would have much effect upon a perverse and 
hardened generation. 

In 1537, Matthew, Archbishop of Salzburg, assembled his pro- 
vincial synod, which, recognizing the urgent necessity of preserving 
the church and protecting the people, adopted a series of reformatory 
canons. Apparently afraid of promulgating them, however, it was 
resolved to suppress them for the present under the pretext that the 
approaching general council would regulate the discipline of the 
church at large, and the archbishop contented himself with a pastoral 
letter addressed to his suffragans, in which he urged upon them to 
consider the contamination to which the laity were exposed through 
the vices of their pastors, and timidly suggested that, if the clergy 
could not restrain their passions, they should at all events indulge 
them secretly, so that scandal might be avoided and the punishment 
of their transgressions be left to an avenging God. 2 

Even in the council of Trent itself, the Bishop of St. Mark, in 
opening its proceedings with a speech, January 6th, 1546, drew a 
fearful picture of the corruption of the world, which had reached a 
degree that posterity might possibly equal but not exceed. This he 
assured the assembled fathers was attributable solely to the wicked- 
ness of the pastors, who drew their flocks with them into the abyss 
of sin. The Lutheran heresy had been provoked by their own guilt, 
and its suppression was only to be hoped for by their own reforma- 
tion. 3 At a later session, the Bavarian orator, August Baumgartner, 
told the assembled fathers that the progress of the Reformation was 



1 Concil. Coloniens. ann. 1536, P. II. 
c. 28. Six years later, in 1542, Bishop 
Hermann embraced Lutheranism, mar- 
ried, and in 1546 was driven from his 
see and retired to his county of Wied, 
where he died some years afterwards, 
at the ripe age of 80 years. 



2 Concil. Salisburg. XLI. (Dalham, 
Concil. Salisburgens. pp. 296-322). 

3 Acta Concil. Trident. (Martene 
Ampl. Coll. (VIII. 1063-9). 



DEMAND FOE THE COUNCIL, 



519 



attributable to the scandalous lives of the clergy, whose excesses he 
could not describe without offending the chaste ears of his auditory. 
He even asserted that out of a hundred priests there were not more 
than three or four who were not either married or concubinarians 1 — 
a statement repeated in a consultation on the subject of ecclesiastical 
reform drawn up in 1562 by order of the Emperor Ferdinand, with 
the addition that the clergy would rather see the whole structure of 
the church destroyed than submit to even the most moderate measure 
of reform. 2 



It is not to be wondered therefore that the Christian world had 
long and earnestly demanded the convocation of an cecum enic council 
which should represent all parties, should have full powers to recon- 
cile all differences, and should give to the ancient church the purifi- 
cation thus recognized as the only efficient means of healing the 
schism. This was a remedy to the last degree distasteful to the Holy 
See. The recollections of Constance and Bale were full of pregnant 
warnings as to the almost inevitable antagonism between the Vice- 
gerent of Christ and an independent representative body, believing 
itself to act under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, claiming 
autocratic supremacy in the church, and convoked for the special 
purpose of reforming abuses, the most of which were fruitful sources 
of revenue to the papal court. Such a body, if assembled in Ger- 
many, would be the pope's master ; if in Italy, his tool ; and it 
behooved him to act warily if he desired to meet the unanimous 
demand of Christendom without risking the sacrifice of his most 
cherished prerogatives. Had the council been called in the early 
days of the Reformation, it could hardly have prevented the separa- 
tion of the churches ; yet, in the temper which then existed, it would 
probably have effected as thorough a purification of the ecclesiastical 
establishment as was possible in so corrupt an age. By delaying it 
until the reactionary movement had fairly set in, the chances of 
troublesome puritans gaining the ascendency were greatly diminished, 
and the papal court exposed itself to little danger when, under the 
urgent pressure of the emperor, it at length, in 1536, proposed to 
convoke the long desired assembly at Mantua. 3 



1 Sarpi, Istor. del Concilio Trident. 
Lib. vi. (Ed. Helmstad. II. 140).— Cf. 
Le Plat, V. 337-8. 

2 Le Plat, V. 235. 



3 Charles was careful to put on 
record his ceaseless endeavors with 
Clement and Paul to obtain the convo- 
cation of a council and the numberless 
promises made to him, for the evasion 



520 



THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, 



A place so completely under papal influence was not likely to 
meet the views of the opposition, and it is not surprising that both 
the Lutherans and Henry VIII. refused to connect themselves with 
such a council. The latter, indeed, in his epistle of April 8, 1538, 
to Charles V., expressed himself more forcibly than elegantly: — 
"No we, if he [the pope] calle us to one of his owne townes, we be 
afraid to be at suche an hostes table. We saye, Better to ryse a 
hungred, then to goo thense with oure belly es fulle." 1 The formality 
of its opening, May 17th, 1537, was therefore an empty ceremony ; 
its transfer to Vicenza was little more ; and, as no delegates presented 
themselves up to the 1st of May, 1538, it was prorogued until 
Easter, 1539, with the promise of selecting a satisfactory place for 
the meeting. The pressure still continued until, in May, 1542, 
Paul finally convoked it to assemble at Trent. The Reformers were 
no better satisfied than before. They had so long professed their 
readiness to submit all the questions in dispute to a free and unbiased 
general council, that they could not refuse absolutely to countenance 
it ; but they were now so completely established as a separate organ- 
ization, that they had little to hope and everything to fear from the 
appeal which they had themselves provoked, and nothing which Rome 
could now offer would have brought them into willing attendance 
upon such a body. 2 They accordingly kept aloof, and on the assem- 
bling of the council, November 22d, 1542, its numbers were so scanty 
that it could accomplish nothing, and it was accordingly suspended 
in July, 1543. When again convoked, March 15th, 1545, but twenty 
bishops and a few ambassadors were present ; these waited with 
what patience they might command for accessions, which were so 
tardy in arriving that when at length the assembly was formally 
opened, on the 13th of December, the number had increased by only 
five. For fifteen months the council continued its sessions, completely 
under the control of the pope, and occupied solely with measures 
designed to draw the line between the Catholic and the Reformed 
churches more sharply than ever. 

The appeals of the German bishops and of the imperial ambass- 



of which reasons were always found. 
— Commentaires de Charles-Quint, pp. 
96-7 (Paris, 1862). 

1 Select. Harl. Miscell., London> 
1793, p. 137. 

2 The temper with which the Pro- 
testants now viewed the council is well 



expressed in a letter from Aonio Palea- 
rio written in 1542 or 1545, from Borne 
to Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, and 
Calvin, urging them by no means to 
sanction the assembly with their pres- 
ence — (Published by Illgen, 4to. Leip- 
zig, 1833). 



SECOND CONVOCATION AT TEENT. 



521 



adors for some effective efforts at reform became at length too 
pressing, and to evade them, in March, 1547, the council was trans- 
ferred to Bologna, against the earnest protest of the emperor and 
the Spaniards, who refused to follow. 1 At Bologna little was done 
except to dispute over the sharp protests of the emperor and to ad- 
journ the council from time to time, until, after falling into universal 
contempt, it was suspended in 1549. Julius III., who received the 
tiara on the 22d of February, 1550, signalized his accession by con- 
voking it again at Trent ; and there it once more assembled on the 
1st of May, 1551. 

At that time Lutheranism in Germany was under the heel of 
Charles V. ; Maurice of Saxony was ripening his schemes of revolt, 
and concealing them with the dexterity in which he was unrivalled ; 
it was the policy of both that Protestant theologians should take part 
in the discussions — of the one, that they should there receive their 
sentence ; of the other, that their presence might assist in cloaking 
his designs. The flight from Innspruck, followed by the Transaction 
of Passau, changed the face of affairs. The Lutheran doctors re- 
joicingly shook the dust from their feet as they departed from Trent, 
complaining that they had been treated as criminals on trial, not as 
venerable members of a body assembled to decide the gravest ques- 
tions relating to this life and that to come. Other symptoms of 
revolt among the Catholic nations were visible, and on the 28th of 
April, 1552, the council again broke up. 2 

Ten years passed away; the faithful impatiently demanded the 
continuation of the work which had only been commenced, and at 
last the pressure became so strong that Pius IV. was obliged to re- 
assemble the council. 3 His Bull bears date November, 1560, but it 



1 There is something very amusingly 
suggestive in the guarded manner in 
which Charles alludes to the translation 
of the Council — " O ditto Papa Paulo 
por respeitos, que o moveram (os quaes 
Deus permitta que forsem bons) tratton 
de avocar e transferir a Bolonha" — 
(Commentaires, p. 98). 

2 That the complaints of the Pro- 
testants were well founded, is evident 
from the secret instructions given, Feb. 
20th, 1552, by Julius III. to the Bishop 
of Monte Fiascone, when sending him 
as legate to Charles V. He was to ex- 
plain to the emperor that the Council 
would not discuss the propositions of 



the heretics " nimirum quod judex non 
respondet parti, ne ex judice se partem 
constituat ;" and he is further to explain 
that "petentes commune concilium 
hseretici et schismatici repellendi sunt 
a onciliis universalibus .... nullo 
modo commmunicandum esse concilium 
cum hsereticis et schismaticis, qui sunt 
extra ecclesiam .... sed bene possunt 
admitti, ut possint interesse pro con- 
vincendis etiam pluries eorum erroribus. ' ' 
— Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. 
T. IV. p. 534-5. 

3 The feeling entertained by Pius 
towards the council is shown by his 
remark, in Dec. 1561, to M. de Lisle, 



522 



THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 



was not until twenty years after Trent had witnessed the first con- 
vocation that the holy men again gathered within its walls, and on 
the 18th of January, 1562, the council resumed its oft-interrupted 
sessions. The States of the Augsburg Confession had been politely 
invited to participate in the proceedings, but they declined with the 
scantest of courtesy. 1 

During this long-protracted farce there were times when those who 
sincerely desired the restoration of the church could not restrain their 
impatience. In 1536, Paul III., who earnestly admitted the neces- 
sity of some reform, called to his aid nine of his prelates most 
eminent for virtue and piety, as a commission to prepare a scheme 
for internal reformation. 2 According to a papal historian, his object 
in this was to stop the mouths of the heretics who found in the 
Roman court an inexhaustible subject of declamation. 3 For two 
years the commission labored at its work, and finally produced the 
" Consilium de emendanda ecclesia," to which allusion has been made 
above. 

The stern and unbending Cardinal Caraffa was head of the com- 
mission, assisted by such men as Contarini, Sadoleto, and Reginald 
Pole. They seem to have been inspired with a sincere desire to root 
out the chief abuses which gave such power to the assaults of the 
Protestants, and the result of their labors affords us a picture of 
ecclesiastical corruptions almost as damaging to the church as the 
complaints of the Diet of Niirnburg. As regards celibacy, they 
were disposed to make no concession ; indeed, they protest against 
the facility with which men in holy orders were able to purchase 
from the Roman curia dispensations to marry. It is significant, 
however, that they had so little confidence in the possibility of puri- 
fying the religious orders that they actually recommended the aboli- 



the French ambassador, that it had 
been called simply for the benefit of 
France — " dautant que ledit concile, 
qui est de peu de besoin pour le reste 
de la chrestiente, superflu aux Catholi- 
ques et non desire des papes " (Le 
Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. IV. 
742). 

1 The characteristic correspondence 
is in Le Plat, IV. 678-87. 

2 Charles declares that at the com- 
mencement of his pontificate Paul was 
earnestly desirous of reforming the 
abuses of the church, but that his zeal 
rapidly diminished and he followed the 



example of Clement in contenting him- 
self with empty promises. — " Com tudo 
despois com o tempo aquellas mostras e 
ardor primeiro se foi esfriando, e se- 
guindo os passos e exemplo do Papa 
Clemente, com boas palavras prolongon 
e entretene sempre a convogao e ajun- 
tamento do concilio " (Commentaires, 
p. 97). 

3 Per serrar la bocca agl' heretici i 
quali non facevano altro in voce et in 
scritto che dir male della corte di 
Koma. — Carraciolo, Vita di Paolo IV. 
MS. Br. Mus. (Young, Life and Times 
of Aonio Paleario, I. 261). 



PKOJECTS OF REFORM. 



523 



tion of the whole monastic system. To prevent individual cases of 
suffering they proposed that the convents should not be immediately 
abolished, but that all novices should be discharged and no more be 
admitted, thus allowing the orders to die out gradually, as had been 
done in Saxony ; and meanwhile they urged that, to prevent further 
scandals, all nunneries should be removed from the supervision and 
direction of monks. 1 The "Consilium," in fact, was so candid a 
confession of most of the abuses charged upon the church by the re- 
formers that Luther forthwith translated it and published it with a 
commentary, as an effective pamphlet in aid of his cause. Caraffa 
himself, after he had attained the papacy, under the name of Paul 
IV., quietly put his own work, in 1559, into the Index Expurgator- 
ius. 2 

The changes recommended in the "Consilium" attacked too many 
vested interests for Paul III., however earnest himself, to be able 
to give it effect. The project therefore was dropped and only re- 
sulted in rendering still more clamorous the call for a reform in the 
head and members of the church. As, moreover, it had shown the 
powerlessness of the papacy to overcome acknowledged abuses, the 
only hope of a radical change, such as was needful, was seen to lie 
in the untrammelled debates of a great assembly, which should meet 
as a parliament of the nations ; and the prospect of this grew more 
and more distant. While the project of transferring the council 
from Trent was being matured, it occurred to the papal court that 
possibly the objections to that measure and the pressure on the 
council for a thorough reformation might be averted by showing a 
disposition on the part of Rome to undertake the task of cleansing 
the Augean stable. It was also recognized as an important gain 
if the council could be confined to the harmless task of defining 
questions of faith, while the substantial powers involved in reforming 
the corruptions of the church could be claimed and exercised by the 
Pope. Accordingly Pius III. drew up an elaborate Bull designed 
to limit some of the more flagrant pecuniary abuses which existed, 
and exhorting the bishops to correct the morals of their subordinates. 
This was sent to the legates at Trent, but they and their confidants 



1 Concilium de Emendanda Ecclesia 
(Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. 
II. 601, 602). 

2 It has been customarily stated by 
Catholic writers that this proceeding of 



Paul IV. was directed not against his 
own work, but against the heretically 
commentated editions, but this, I be- 
lieve, has been refuted by Schelhorn. 
See Gibbings's " Taxes of the Peniten- 
tiary," p. xlix. 



524 THE COUNCIL OF TEENT. 

unanimously agreed that, in the existing temper of the council, the 
promulgation of such a document would be in the highest degree 
imprudent. It was accordingly suppressed, and has only seen the 
light within the present century. 1 In its failure the church lost 
but little, for it touched the evils of the time with a tender and hesi- 
tating hand, and would have proved utterly inefficacious. 

At length, when shortly afterwards the unmannerly urgency of the 
Germans, clamoring for decided measures of reform, was met by the 
translation of the council to Bologna in 1547, and men despaired of 
further results from it, Charles V. resolved to take the matter into 
his own hands, and to effect, for his own dominions at least, that 
which had been vainly expected of the council for Christendom. 
The "Interim," which has already been alluded to, was intended to 
answer this purpose as far as Lutheranism was concerned, in healing 
the breach of religion. The other great object of the council, the 
restoration of the neglected discipline of the church, he attempted 
to effect by means of the secular authority of the empire acting on 
the regular machinery of the Teutonic ecclesiastical establishment. 
How utterly neglected that discipline had become is inferable from 
an expression in the important and carefully drawn project which 
had been laid by Charles before the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541, to 
the effect that if the canon requiring celibacy was to be enforced, it 
would be necessary also to revive those canons which punished incon- 
tinence, thus admitting that there existed no check whatever upon 
immorality. 2 

To accomplish this desirable revival of discipline he accordingly 
caused the adoption by the Diet of Augsburg of a code of reforma- 
tion, well adapted, if enforced, to restore the long-forgotten purity 
of the church, while at the same time it acknowledged that the de- 
generacy of the times rendered impossible the resuscitation of the 
ancient canons in their strictness. Thus, after reciting the canon of 
Neocsesarea (see p. 51), it adds, that as such severity was now im- 
practicable, those in holy orders convicted of impurity should be 
separated from their concubines, and visited with suspension from 
function and benefice proportioned to the gravity of the offence. A 
repetition of the fault was punishable with increased severity, and 
incorrigible sinners who were found to be incapable of reformation 



1 Published by Clausen, Copenhagen, 1829. 

2 Lib. ad Eation. Concord, ineundam Art. xxn. § 13 (G-oldast. II. 199). 



EFFORTS OF CHARLES V, 



525 



were finally to be deprived of their benefices. As concubines were 
threatened with immediate excommunication, it is evident that a 
severity was designed towards them which was not ventured on with 
respect to their more guilty partners. Relaxation of the rules is 
also observable in the section which, despite the Nicene canon, per- 
mitted the residence of women over forty years of age, whose char- 
acter and conduct relieved them from suspicion. 1 The imperative 
injunctions of chastity laid upon the regular clergy, canons, and 
nuns, show not only the determination to remove the prevailing 
scandals, but also the magnitude and extent of the evil. 2 

Nor was this all. Local councils were ordered for the purpose of 
embodying these decrees in their statutes, and of carrying out with 
energy the reformation so earnestly desired. Thus, in November, 
1548, about five months after the Diet, a synod assembled at Augs- 
burg, which inveighed bitterly against the unclerical dress and pomp 
of the clergy, their habits of drunkenness, gluttony, licentiousness, 
tavern-lounging, and general disregard of discipline ; and adopted a 
canon embracing the regulations enacted by the emperor. 3 The 
Archbishop of Treves did not wait for his synod, but issued, October 
30th, a mandate especially directed against concubinary priests, in 
which he announced his intention of carrying out the reform com- 
manded by Charles. He could find no reason more self-evident for 
the dislike and contempt felt by the people for so many of the clergy 
than the immorality of their lives, differing little, except in legality, 
from open marriage. " This vice, existing everywhere throughout 
our diocese, in consequence of the license of the times and the 
neglect of the officials, we must eradicate. Therefore all of you, 
of what grade soever, shall dismiss your concubines within nine days, 
removing them beyond the bounds of your parishes, and be no longer 
seen to associate with loose and wanton women. Those who neglect 
this order shall be suspended from office and benefice, their concu- 
bines shall be excommunicated, and they themselves be brought 
before our synod to be presently held." 4 

These were brave words, but when, some three weeks later, the 
synod was assembled, and the malefactors perchance brought before 
it, the good bishop found apparently that his flock was not disposed 
to submit quietly to the curtailment of privileges which had almost 



1 Formul. Eeformat. cap. xvn. 
(Goldast. II. 335). 

2 Ibid. cap. in. I 1, cap. v. \\ 7, 



3 Synod. Augustan, ann. 1548 c. 10. 

4 Synod. Trevirens. ann. 1548. 



526 



THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 



become imprescriptible. His tone accordingly was softened, for 
though he deprecated their immorality more strongly than- ever, and 
asserted his intention of enforcing his mandate, he condescended to 
argue at much length on the propriety of chastity, and even de- 
scended to entreaty, beseeching them to preserve the purity so essen- 
tial to the character of the church, the absence of which had drawn 
upon the clergy an odium which could scarce be described in words. 1 
How slender was his success may be inferred from the fact that the 
next year he felt it necessary to hold another synod, in which he 
renewed and confirmed the proceedings of the former one, and en- 
deavored to reduce the monks and nuns of his diocese into some 
kind of subjection to the rules of discipline. 2 

The Archbishop of Cologne was as energetic as his brother of 
Treves, with about equal success. On September 1st he issued the 
Augsburg Formula of Reformation, with a call for a synod to be 
held on October 2d. At the same time he manifested his sense of 
the primary importance of correcting clerical immorality by promul- 
gating a special mandate respecting concubinage. He asserted this 
to be the chief cause of the contempt popularly felt for the church, 3 
and he ordered all ecclesiastics to send their women beyond the bounds 
of their parishes within nine days, under the penalties provided in 
the imperial decree. The synod was held at the time indicated, and, 
though it adopted no regular canons, it accepted the Augsburg For- 
mula and the mandate of the archbishop, with a trifling alteration. 4 

This proved utterly ineffectual, for in March, 1549, he assembled 
a provincial council, in which he deplored the license of the times, 
which rendered the strictness of the ancient canons unadvisable, and 
he announced that it had been decided to proceed gradually with the 
intended reforms. As to the morals of the clergy, he stated that 
everywhere the cure of souls was delegated to improper persons, 
many of them living in the foulness of concubinage, in perpetual 
drunkenness, and in other infamous vices, encouraged by the negli- 
gence of bishops and the thirst of archdeacons for unhallowed gains. 
The unions of those who, infected by the new heresies, did not hesi- 
tate to enter into matrimony, were of course pronounced illicit and 



1 Synod. Trevirens. ann. 1548 cap. ii. 

2 Synod. Trevirens. II. ann. 1549 
cap. xi., xix. 

3 Mandat. de abjic. Concub. (Hartz- 
beim VI. 353). 



4 Ibid. p. 358. A Diocesan Synod 
was also held at Liege, Nov. 15, wbich 
gave offending clerks fifteen days to 
part with tbeir concubines (Ibid. VI. 
395). 



EFFORTS OF CHARLES V. 527 

impious, their offspring illegitimate, and the parents anathematized ; 
but for those who remained in the church, yet submitted to no re- 
straint upon their passions, a more merciful spirit was shown, for the 
punishments ordered by the Diet of Augsburg were somewhat light- 
ened in their favor. The extreme license of the period may be 
understood from another canon directed against the comedians, who, 
not content with the ordinary theatres, were in the habit of visiting 
the nunneries, where their profane plays and amatory acting excited 
to unholy desires the virgins dedicated to God. 1 No one acquainted 
with the coarseness of the drama of that rude age can doubt the pro- 
priety of the archbishop's reproof. Supplementary synods were also 
held in October, 1549, and February, 1550, to perfect the details of 
a very thorough inquisitorial visitation of the whole province. 

This visitation, so pompously heralded, did not take place. At a 
synod held in October, 1550, the archbishop made sundry lame 
excuses for its postponement. Another synod was assembled in 
February, 1551, at which we hear nothing more of it ; but the pre- 
lates of the diocese were requested to collect such ancient and for- 
gotten canons as they could find, which might be deemed advan- 
tageous in the future ; 2 and with this the work of reformation in the 
province of Cologne appears to end. 

In 1549, Ernest, Archbishop of Salzburg, assembled the synod of 
his extensive province, but when his clergy understood that it was 
intended to confirm the reformatory edict of the emperor, they had 
the audacity to present a petition praying that the clause ordering 
the removal of their concubines should not be enforced. They de- 
clared that the attempt to do so would be attended with serious diffi- 
culty, and that it would lead to greater evils than it sought to remove, 
and they asked that the consideration of the matter should be referred 
to the general council, whose reassembling was no longer dreaded. 
The synod, with a proper sense of its dignity, refused to receive the 
shameless petition, and listened rather to those of its members who 
complained of the practice of the officials in receiving bribes for per- 
mitting illicit indulgences, and the representations of Duke William, 
of Bavaria, who asserted that the Lutheran heresy had been caused 
by the scandalous corruption of the church. A canon was accord- 



1 Concil. Coloniens. arm. 1549 cap. 
Quibus possint. — Cap. de Monach. 



conjugat. — Cap. de Concub. Monach. 
— Cap. Comoedias. 

2 Hartzheim VI. 767, 781. 



528 



THE COUNCIL OF TEENT, 



inglj adopted which renewed the regulations of Bale and ordered 
the speedy removal of all recognized and notorious concubines. 1 

In October and November, 1548, and April, 1549, the Bishops 
of Paderborn, Wurzburg, and Strassburg held synods which adopted 
the reformatory measures decreed at Augsburg. 2 These were pre- 
paratory to the metropolitan synod of Mainz, assembled in May, 
1549, which commanded that no one should be thereafter admitted 
to orders without a preliminary examination by his bishop on the 
subject of doctrine, and testimonials from the people as to purity of 
character. After thus wisely providing for the future, attention was 
directed to the present. It was declared intolerable that, in spite of 
the reiterated prohibitions of the fathers and councils, concubines 
should be universally kept ; the Basilian canon was therefore revived, 
and its enforcement strictly enjoined on the ordinaries, who were 
forbidden in any manner to connive at these disorders for the sake 
of profit. 3 

The pressure was continued, for when Cambrai, which owed tem- 
poral obedience to the emperor, while ecclesiastically it formed part 
of the province of Bheims, neglected to adopt the Formula of Augs- 
burg for two years, it was not allowed to escape. In October, 1550, 
a synod was finally assembled there under stringent orders from 
Charles, and the Formula was published, together with an elaborate 
series of canons, which would have been well adapted to correct 
abuses that were not incorrigible. 4 



Charles had thus exerted all the resources of his imperial suprem- 
acy, and, whether willingly or not, the powerful prelates who ruled 
the German church had united in carrying out his views. The tem- 
poral and spiritual authorities had thus been concentrated upon the 
vices of the church, and if its reformation had been possible, in the 
existing condition of its organization, some improvement must have 
resulted from these combined and persistent efforts. How nugatory 



1 Dalham, Concil. Salisbury, pp. 328, 
337 (Concil. Salisburg. XLIV. can. 
vii.). 

2 Gropp, Collect. Script. "Wirceburg. 
I. 311.— Hartzheim VI. 359, 417. In 
the epistle convoking bis council, 
Bishop Melchior of Wurzburg alluded 
passionately to the evils everywhere ex- 
isting: " Yidetis percussum pastorem ; 
videtis oves dispersas ; videtis impu- 



dentem peccandi licentiam; videtis 
adversus pietatem audaciam turn lo- 
quendi turn disputandi impiissimam, et 
indies scelerata gliscere schismata " 
(Ibid. X. 753). 

3 Concil. Mogunt. ann. 1549 c. 82, 
102. 

* Synod. Camerac. ann. 1550 (Hartz- 
heim VI. 654). 



DEMAND FOR CLERICAL MARRIAGE. 



529 



were the results may be guessed from a memorial presented in 1558, 
by the University of Louvain, to Philip II., exhorting him to grant 
no toleration to the heretics, but, at the same time, urging upon him 
the absolute necessity of some comprehensive system of reform to 
purify the church, all the orders of which were given over utterly to 
the twin vices of avarice and licentiousness. 1 The same testimony 
is borne by a consultation drawn up in 1562 by order of the Em- 
peror Ferdinand. After alluding to the efforts at reform made by 
Paul III. and Charles V., it declares that their only result has been 
to make the condition of clerical morality worse than before, exciting 
the hatred of the people for their priests to an incredible pitch, and 
doing more to inflame the ardor of heresy than all the teaching of 
Christian truth can do to restrain it. 2 

As the failure of all efforts to improve clerical morality under the 
existing rules of discipline was thus found to be complete, there arose 
in the minds of thinking men a conviction, such as Erasmus had 
already declared, that, since all other measures had proved fruitless, 
the only mode of securing a virtuous clergy was to remove the pro- 
hibition of marriage. At the Polish Diet of 1552 petitions praying 
for sacerdotal matrimony were presented, and, though they failed in 
their object, the Diet of 1556 authorized King Sigismund Augustus 
to address Paul IV. with a request, in the name of the nation, to 
grant it as well as communion in both elements. 3 

The dissension thus existing within the church is exhibited in a 
volume published in 1558 by Stanislas Hosius, Bishop of Ermeland, 
earnestly arguing against communion in both elements, clerical mar- 
riage, and the use of the vulgar tongue in worship. As regards 
celibacy, he assumes that it had been maintained unbrokenly for 
fifteen hundred years, and was not now to be abandoned to gratify 
a few disorderly monks. The example of the Greek church he meets 
by pointing out that the Greeks were suffered to be persecuted by 
the Turks ; the argument that marriage would purify the church he 
silences with the observation that many married men are adulterers ; 



1 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Tri- 
dent. IV. 611. 

2 Consult. Imp. Ferdinand. (Le Plat, 
Y. 235). It would be impossible to 
conceive a darker picture of clerical 
life than is given in this document. 
" Ejici autem nunc clerum, conculcari 
pedibus, pro nihilo haberi et tanquam 



publicum offendiculum devoveri diris 
aut paulo plus, tarn verum est quam 
mini me falsum, cleri mores insulsos 
esse, van os esse, turpes esse, aeque 
ecclesise perniciosos ac Deo execrabiles " 
—Ibid. p. 237. 

3 Krasinski, Eeformation in Poland, 
I. 190, 285. 



34 



530 



THE COUNCIL OF TRENT 



and he holds it to be a doubting of God to suppose that the gift of 
continence would be denied to those who properly seek it. 1 In spite 
of the logic of polemics such as Hosius, the opinions of the inno- 
vators continued to gain ground, until at length they won even the 
highest dignitaries of the empire, and in 1560 the Emperor Ferdi- 
nand himself undertook their advocacy with the pope, after having 
for some years countenanced the practice within his own territories. 

Almost immediately on the consecration of Pius IV., in addressing 
to him an argument for the reassembling of the council of Trent, or 
the convocation of a new council, Ferdinand seized the opportunity 
to ask especially for the communication of the cup to the laity, and 
permission for the clergy to marry. The latter of these points he 
considered to be the only remedy for the fearful immorality of the 
church, for, though all flesh was corrupt, the corruption of the priest- 
hood surpassed that of all other men. 2 That he had not waited for 
the papal assent to favor these innovations within his own dominions 
is shown by his statement that the Archbishop of Salzburg had 
recently, in a synod, earnestly called upon him to put a stop to the 
progress which they were making, but, he added, his long experience 
in such matters had shown him what was possible, and what impos- 
sible, and he had accordingly set forth the difficulties of the task in 
a paper addressed to the archbishop, a copy of which he inclosed to 
the pope. 3 

The nuncio Commendone, in transmitting this document to Rome, 
accompanied it with a letter from the Cardinal Bishop of Augsburg, 
recommending the postponement of the question until the reassem- 



1 Hosii Dialogus de ea, num Calicem 
Laicis et Uxores Sacerdotibus permitti 
etc. DilingaB, 1558. 

2 Pallavicini, Storia del Concil. di 
Trento, Lib. xiv. c. 13. 

Twelve years before, bis uncle, the 
Bishop of Liege, in promulgating the 
Augsburg formula of reformation, had 
made a similar assertion — " Preterquam 
quod hoc infoelici saeculo, quo omnis 
caro corrupit viam suam, prsesertimque 
ordo clericorum et ecclesiasticorum, 
nimium degenerant, plus quam un- 
quam est necessaria " — Concil. Leo- 
diens. ann. 1548 (Hartzheim VI. 392). 
The increased emphasis of Ferdinand 
is a measure of the success which had 
attended the reformatory movements of 
Charles V. during the interval. 

In such a condition of ecclesiastical 



morality it is no wonder that even in 
orthodox Vienna the most popular 
theme on which preachers could ex- 
patiate was the corruption of the 
church. — See the Emperor Ferdinand's 
secret instructions to his envoy in Rome, 
March 6th, 1560, in Le Plat, Monu- 
ment. Concil. Trident. IV. 622. 

3 Pallavicini, loc. cit. That the 
Catholic church of Germany had be- 
come widely infected with this Lu- 
theran heresy is also shown by the 
fact that in 1548 the Archbishop of 
Cologne had found it necessary to\ pro- 
hibit throughout his province all mar- 
riages of priests, monks, and nuns, and 
had pronounced illegitimate the off- 
spring of such unions. — Hartzheim 
VI. 357. 



DEMAND FOR CLERICAL MARRIAGE 



531 



bling of the council of Trent, and, as Pius answered it in this sense, 
no further action was taken, though Ferdinand made haste to repeat 
his demand, in view of the impatience of both clergy and people, who 
could ill brook the delays inseparable from the discussion of the sub- 
ject in so unwieldy a body. 1 When Commendone, moreover, passed 
through Cleves on his way to the council, then about to be reopened, 
the Duke of Cleves earnestly besought him to lend his influence to 
the accomplishment of the measure, urging as a reason that in the 
whole of his dominions — and he was sovereign of three populous 
duchies — there could not be found five priests who did not keep con- 
cubines. In order to secure his favor for the approaching council, 
Commendone did not scruple to hold out expectations that the con- 
cessions would be granted. 2 

During the progress of the Reformation, when the fate of the 
Catholic church of Germany had sometimes seemed to hang in the 
balance, no princes had earned a larger title to the gratitude of Rome 
than the powerful Dukes of Bavaria, who were the leaders of the 
reaction. Yet now the influence of that important region was thrown 
in favor of the abrogation of celibacy, and Duke Albert was the first 
who boldly brought the matter before the council by a demand for 
ecclesiastical marriage, presented on the 27th of June, 1562. To 
this the evasive answer was returned that the council would take 
such action as would be found to redound to the glory of God and 
to the benefit of the church. 3 During the same year the Emperor 
Ferdinand also repeatedly urged its consideration. A plan for the 
reform of the church presented by his delegates not only called 
attention to the necessity of purifying the morals of the regular and 
secular clergy, but demanded that, to some nations at least, the privi- 
lege of sacerdotal marriage should be conceded. 4 Another elaborate 
paper argued the question with much temperate force, and declared 
that many priests had already married for the purpose of escaping 
the corruptions of celibacy, while studiously preserving themselves 
from the errors of Lutheranism. Out of a hundred parish priests 
scarcely one could be found who was not either openly or secretly 



1 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Tri- 
dent. IV. 644. 

2 Pallavicini, Lib. xv. c. 5. — The 
duke, though no bigot, was a good 
Catholic. 

3 Pallavicini, Lib. xvn. c. 4. At 



the request of Duke Albert, the ques- 
tion was also mooted at the provincial 
synod of Salzburg, held in 1562 for 
the purpose of sending delegates to 
Trent.— Hartzheim VII. 230. 

4 Articuli de Reform. Eccles. No. 
14, 15, 18.— Goldast. II. 376. 



532 THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 

married, and it was necessary to tolerate them to prevent the utter 
destruction of the church. 1 

A third document is extant, without date, which was laid before 
the cardinals of the papal court by the emperor, in which the ques- 
tion was argued at considerable length and with much vehemence. 
After asserting that from the records of the primitive church celibacy 
was not then recognized as imperative, it proceeded to declare that 
if marriage ever were permissible, the present carnal and licentious 
age rendered it a necessity, for not one Catholic priest out of fifty 
could be found who lived chastely. All were asserted to be notori- 
ously dissolute, scandalizing the people and inflicting great damage 
on the church. The request was made not so much to satisfy the 
priests who desired marriage as to meet the wishes of the laity, for 
many patrons of livings refused presentation to all but married men. 
However preferable a single life might be for the clergy, it therefore 
was thought better to give it up than to leave open the door to the 
scandalous impurities traceable to celibacy. Another weighty reason 
was alleged in the great scarcity of priests, caused alone by the pro- 
hibition of marriage, in proof of which it was urged that the Catholic 
schools of divinity were all but empty and the episcopal function of 
ordination nearly disused, while the Lutheran colleges were crowded 
by those who subsequently obtained admission into the true church, 
where they worked incredible mischief. The argument that the 
temporal possessions of the church would be imperilled by sacerdotal 
matrimony was met by indignantly denouncing the worldly wisdom 
which would protect such perishable interests at the cost of innumer- 
able souls sacrificed by the existing condition of affairs. For these 
and other reasons it asked that marriage should in future be allowed 
to all the priesthood, whether already in orders or to be subsequently 
admitted : that married men of good character and education should 
be ordained to supply the want of pastors : that those who had con- 
tracted matrimony, in contravention of the canons, should no longer 
be ejected, seeing that it was most absurd to turn out men because 
they were married, while retaining notorious concubinarians, and 
that if, with equal justice, both classes should be dismissed, the people 
would be left almost, if not entirely, destitute of spiritual guides. 
The paper concluded by asserting that if the prayer be granted the 
clergy could be retained in the church and in the faith, to the great 



Consultat. Imp. Ferdinandi (Le Plat, V. 249, 252). 



DEMAND FOR CLERICAL MARRIAGE. 



533 



benefit of their flocks, and that the scandal of promiscuous licenti- 
ousness, which had involved the church in so much disgrace, would 
be removed. 1 

This vivid sketch of the condition of the church, with the evils 
which were everywhere felt, and the remedies which suggested them- 
selves to clear-sighted and impartial men, was as ineffectual as other 
similar efforts had been, for to all such arguments the council of Trent 
was deaf. France, too, was more than willing to see celibacy abol- 
ished. M. de Lanssac, the French ambassador, was ordered to place 
himself in close relations with the representatives of the emperor, 
and to unite with them in seeking the relaxation of all regulations 
which tended to prevent the reunion of the Protestants, while the 
Gallican bishops were commanded to show themselves reasonable and 
yielding in such matters ; and when Lanssac reported the demands 
of the emperor, comprehending clerical marriage among other changes, 
Charles IX. assented to them in terms of warm commendation. 2 The 
Cardinal of Lorraine, moreover, was instructed to urge some measures 
efficient to reform the licentious lives of the ecclesiastics which spread 
corruption and debauchery among the people, while permission for 
priestly marriage was recommended as one of the means essential to 
recall the heretics to the bosom of the true church. 3 As a compro- 
mise, however, the French prelates contented themselves with sug- 
gesting that none but elderly men should be eligible to the priesthood, 
and that the testimony of the people in favor of their moral character 
should be a prerequisite to ordination, in hopes that by such means 
the necessary purification of the clergy at least could be effected, 
while the sharpest measures should be adopted to punish their licen- 
tiousness. 4 

All this was useless, and, in fact, it is difficult to imagine how any 
one could expect a reform of this nature from a body composed of 
prelates all whom were obliged by Pius IV., in a decree of Sep- 
tember 4th, 1560, to solemnly swear to a profession of faith contain- 
ing a specific declaration that the vows of chastity assumed on enter- 
ing into holy orders or monastic life were to be strictly observed and 
enforced. 5 The question thus was prejudged, and the council was 



1 Considerat. Caesar. Ma] est. sup. 
Matrim. Sacerd. Nos. 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 
12, 13, 15, 16, 17 (Goldast. II. 382-3 
— Le Plat, VI. 315). 

2 Le Plat, V. 154, 208, 211. 

3 Le Plat, V. 562-3. 



4 Capi dati da' Francesi cap. 1 — 
(Baluz. et Mansi IY. 374) Comp. Zac- 
caria pp. 133-4. 

5 Votum castitatis sacris ordinibus 
conjunctum, atque vota quae inprobatis 
religionibus emittuntur, et alia quae- 



534 



THE COUNCIL OF TRENT 



more likely to listen to Bartholomew a Martyribus, the Archbishop 
of Bracara, who laid before them a paper containing the points which, 
in his opinion, required reformation, among which were the revival 
of the canons respecting concubinary bishops and priests, the prohi- 
bition of sons succeeding to their father's benefices, and the excom- 
munication of confessors who debauched their fair penitents l — though 
when the sturdy archbishop in a stormy debate declared that "illus- 
trissimi cardinales egent illustrissima reformatione,"he doubtless was 
held to be a most uncourtly and impracticable reformer. 

Despite all the urgency from without, it was not until the 8th of 
February, 1563, after the council had been in session for more than 
a year, that the theologians at last arranged for disputation the articles 
on matrimony, and laid them before the council for discussion. They 
were divided into five classes, of which the fourth was devoted to the 
bearing of the subject on the clergy, consisting of two propositions 
artfully drawn up to justify rejection, while preserving the appear- 
ance of presenting the subject for deliberation — That matrimony 
was preferable to celibacy, and that God bestowed grace on the mar- 
ried rather than on the single. — That the priests of the Western 
Church could lawfully contract marriage, notwithstanding the canons ; 
that to deny this was to condemn matrimony, and that all were at 
liberty to marry who did not feel themselves graced with the gift of 
chastity. 2 

The disputation on the various questions connected with matri- 
mony commenced the next day, and was continued at intervals for 
six months. By August 7th all the canons on the subject were 
agreed to, except the one on clandestine marriages, which gave the 
fathers much more trouble than the more important decision respect- 
ing the retention of celibacy. 3 This latter, indeed, was a foregone 
conclusion. In the minute account, transmitted from day to day by 
Archbishop Calini to Cardinal Cornaro, in which all the details of 
internal discussion and external intrigue attainable by a quick-witted 
member of the council were reported, there is no allusion to the sub- 
ject. No debates or diversity of opinion are mentioned, no intima- 



cunque rite suscepta, fideliter sunt 
observanda.— Le Plat, IV. 649. 

1 Ibid. iv. 756, 760, 761, 765.— The 
182 articles which, according to Arch- 
bishop Bartholomew, required reform in 
the internal discipline of the church 
form as damaging a commentary upon 



its condition as any of the attacks of 
the Protestants. 



2 Art. v. - 
Calini (Baluz 
Plat, V. 674. 

3 Lettere di Calini (Ibid 



Lettere del Arcivesc. 
et Mansi IV. 295).— Le 



CELIBACY A FOKEGOJSTE CONCLUSION. 



535 



tion that the matter was regarded as open to a doubt, and even the 
appeals made by the emperor and other potentates are passed over 
in silence, for the very sufficient reason that the papal legates, who 
controlled all the business of the council, refused to allow them to 
be read. 1 In their reply to the emperor's remonstrances, indeed, 
they declared that to have such a subject publicly broached in the 
council would create a fearful scandal throughout Christendom, and 
Pius IV. approved of their answer as the best that could be given. 2 
It is no wonder, therefore, that in the correspondence of the nuncio 
Visconti the only allusion to the matter is a simple reference, under 
date of March 22, 1563, to the demand previously made by the 
Duke of Bavaria. 3 

In fact, when, on March 4th, the 5th and 6th articles were reached, 
they were both unanimously pronounced heretical without any pro- 
longed debate. Doctor Juan de Ludegna pronounced a " disputa- 
tion" on the subject, the tone of which showed that the result was 
already decided, and that the only disposition of the council was to 
vilify those who desired the abrogation of celibacy. 4 A discussion, 
however, then arose as to the power of the pope to dispense the 
clergy, both regular and secular, from the obligation of celibacy, and 
on this point there was considerable diversity of opinion, occupying 
numerous successive meetings in its settlement. The majority were 
in favor of the papal power ; and its exercise in the existing con- 
dition of the church was even recommended by those who recognized 
the evils of the system, but shrank from the responsibility of them- 
selves introducing the innovation. This was promptly rebuked by 
the conservatives, according to Era Paolo, with the remark that a 
prudent physician would not attempt to cure one disease by bringing 
on a greater. 5 The legates, indeed, were blamed for allowing any 
discussion on so dangerous a topic, since, if priests were permitted to 
marry, their affections would be concentrated on family and country, 
in place of the church ; their subjection to the Holy See would be 



1 See the apologetic letter of the 
nuncio to the emperor, Jan. 19th, 1562 
(Le Plat, op. cit. V. 320). Ferdinand 
remonstrated earnestly, hut did not 
venture to rehel against their decision 
(Ibid. 351-60). 

2 Ibid. p. 388. 

3 Lettere del Nunzio Yisconti (Ba- 
luz. et Mansi III. 453). 

* Disputat. Joann. de Ludegna (Har- 



duin. X. 359). The learned doctor 
presents his argument in the form of a 
colloquy between himself and Calvin, 
and its spirit may be gathered from the 
first speech of Calvin, in which he is 
made to declare that he is endeavoring 
to find arguments with which to defend 
himself and his apostate strumpets. 

5 Sarpi, Lib. vn. (Opere, II. 280, 
Helmstat, 1761). 



536 



THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 



diminished, the whole system of the hierarchy destroyed, and the 
pope himself would eventually become a simple Bishop of Rome. 1 
If such consequences as these were anticipated by the able men who 
represented the papal interests, we may readily believe that Palla- 
vicini speaks the sense of the managers of the council when he 
remarks, concerning the princes who exerted themselves in favor of 
sacerdotal marriage, that they seemed to consider that the council 
had been convoked for the purpose not of condemning but of con- 
tenting the heretics, whom they proposed to convert by gratifying 
in place of repressing their contumacious desires. 2 If this be so, the 
Protestants were amply justified in refusing to submit their cause to a 
body so different in its objects from that free and unbiased cecumenic 
council to which they had so often appealed from their persecutors. 

Yet, notwithstanding that the policy of the church was thus im- 
mutable, there seems to have been no hesitation in holding out falla- 
cious hopes to the expectant populations. "When, in the spring of 
1563, the Bavarians, wearied with endless promises, rose in revolt 
and demanded the use of the cup and priestly marriage, their duke 
was obliged to make a promise to his Diet that if the required con- 
cessions were not granted in June, by either the council or the pope, 
he would himself give the desired permission. The threatened defec- 
tion of this Catholic stronghold caused such alarm that the legates at 
Trent forthwith despatched Niccolo Ormanetto to the duke, to per- 
suade him to withdraw his promised reforms under a pledge that the 
council would take such order as would satisfy the demands of his 
people. 3 

These promises were soon forgotten, though it was not until the 
11th of November that the canons on matrimony were finally adopted 
and formally published. Of these there are two relating to our sub- 
ject. The first one pronounced the dread anathema on all who should 
dare to assert that clerks in holy orders, monks, or nuns could con- 
tract marriage, or that such a marriage was valid, since God would 
not deny the gift of chastity to those who rightly sought it, nor would 
He expose us to temptation beyond our strength. The other simi- 
larly anathematized all who dared to assert that the married state was 
more worthy than virginity, or that it was not better to live in celi- 
bacy than married. 4 



1 Sarpi (loc. cit.). 

8 Pallavicini, Lib. xvn. c. 4. 

3 Sarpi, Lib. viii. p. 315. 



4 Concil. Trident. Sess. xxiv. De 
Sacrament. Matrimon. 

Can. ix. Si quis dixerit clericos in 
sacris ordinibus constitutes, vel regu- 



CELIBACY MAINTAINED 



537 



Thus the church, in endeavoring to meet the novel exigencies 
caused by the progress and enlightenment of mankind, in place of 
making the concessions demanded by almost all beyond the narrow- 
pale of the papal court, devoted its energies to the miserable task of 
separating itself as widely as possible from those who had left it. 1 
Its rulers seemed to imagine that their only hope of safety lay in 
intrenching themselves behind the exaggerations of those particular 
points of policy which had afforded to their adversaries the fairest 
chances of attack. The faithful throughout Germany might suffer 
from the absence of the ministers of Christ, or might endure yet 
more from the unrestrained passions of the wolves in sheep's clothing 
let loose among their wives and daughters, but the church militant 
in this conjuncture dreaded even more to lose the aid of that monastic 
army which, in theory at least, had no earthly object but the service 
of St. Peter; it selfishly feared that the parish priest who might 
legitimately see his fireside surrounded by a happy group of wife 
and children would lose the devotion which a man without ties should 
entertain for the prosperity and glory of the ecclesiastical establish- 
ment; and perhaps, more than all, it saw with terror avaricious 
princes eager for the secularization of that immense property to 
which it owed so large a portion of the splendor which dazzled man- 
kind, of the influence which rendered it powerful, and of the luxury 
which made its high places attractive to the ambitious and able men 
who controlled its destiny. To put an end, therefore, at once and 
forever, to the mutterings of dissatisfaction among those who com- 
pared the calm and virtuous life of the Protestant pastors with the 
reckless self-indulgence of the ministers of the old religion, it was 



lares castitatem solemnitor professos, 
posse matrimonium contrahere, con- 
tractumque validum esse, non obstante 
lege ecclesiastica vel voto ; et oppositum 
nihil aliud esse quam damnare matri- 
monium ; posseque omnes contrahere 
matrimonium, qui non sentiunt se 
castitatis, etiamsi earn voverint, habere 
donum ; anathema sit ; quum Deus id 
recte petentibus non deneget, nee 
patiatur nos supra id quod possumus 
tentari. 

Can. x. Si quis dixerit statum con- 
jugalem anteponendum esse statui 
virginitatis vel coelibatus, et non esse 
melius ac beatius manere in virginitate 
aut coelibatu, quam jungi matrimonio, 
anathema sit. 



1 The feelings which the Council ex- 
cited among the Protestants are ex- 
pressed with more vicor than elegance 
by Alexander Nowell, at that time 
Dean of St. Paul's—" No Sir, your 
Prelats sat not there about conning of 
Articles of Keligion, or to Dispute with 
Heretieks to vanquish them. A few 
\ouzj Friars, whom no Man would fear 
but in his Pottage or Egg-py, did serve 
that Turn well enough. And your 
great Prelates devised the while by 
that long Consultation, how by Sword 
and Fire they might most cruelly murder 
all true Christians, whom they call 
Heretieks ; and now do labour to put 
in Execution such their bloody De- 
vices." — Strype's Annals, I. 377. 



538 THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 

resolved to place the canon of celibacy in a position where none of 
the orthodox should dare to attack it, and to accomplish this the 
simple rule of discipline was elevated to the dignity of a point of 
belief. As the church had already been forced, in defending the 
rule from the assaults of the reformers, to attribute to it apostolic 
origin, we may not perhaps be surprised that it was made a point 
of doctrine, but we cannot easily appreciate the reasons that would 
justify the anathema launched against all who regarded the marriage 
of those in holy orders as binding. The dissolution of such mar- 
riages, as we have seen, was not suggested until the middle of the 
twelfth century, and the decision of the council thus condemned as 
heretics the whole body of the church during three-quarters of its 
previous existence. 

Although the doctrinal canon threw the responsibility of priestly 
unchastity upon Grod, yet as the council had so peremptorily refused 
to adopt the remedy urged by the princes of the empire, it did not 
hesitate to employ human means to remove, if possible, the scandals 
which God had permitted to afflict the church. The decree of refor- 
mation, published in December, 1563, contained provisions intended 
to curb the vice which the Tridentine fathers, with all their reliance 
on Divine power, well knew to be ineradicable. These provisions, 
however, were little more than a repetition of what we have seen 
enacted in every century since Siricius. Any ecclesiastic guilty of 
keeping a concubine, or woman liable to suspicion, was admonished ; 
disregarding this first warning, he was deprived of one-third of his 
revenue ; if still contumacious, suspension from functions and bene- 
fice followed ; and a persistence in guilt was then visited with irrevoc- 
able deprivation. No appeal from a sentence could gain exemption ; 
these cases were removed from the jurisdiction of inferior officials and 
confided to the bishops, who were enjoined to be prompt and severe 
in their decisions ; while guilty bishops were liable to suspension by 
their provincial synods, and, if irreclaimable, were sent to Rome for 
punishment. The illegitimate children of priests were pronounced 
incapable of preferment. Those already in orders, if employed in 
their fathers' parishes, were required, under pain of deprivation, to 
exchange their positions within three months for preferment else- 
where, and any provision made by a clerical parent for the benefit of 
his children was pronounced to be a fraud. 1 



1 Concil. Trident. Sess. xxv. Decret. de Keformat. cap. 14, 15. 



RENEWED EFFORTS OF GERMANY 



539 



Such were the regulations which this great general council of the 
Catholic church considered sufficient to relieve the establishment of 
the curse which had hung around it for a thousand years. There is 
nothing in them that had not been tried a hundred times before, with 
what success the foregoing pages may attest. In some respects, 
indeed, they were not as prompt and efficacious as the decrees which 
Charles V. and his bishops had promulgated a few years previous, 
and which had proved so lamentably inefficient. There were not 
wanting enlightened members of the council who bitterly felt the 
inefficiency of what they were doing, but the undignified haste of the 
closing sessions, and the all-powerful opposition of Rome, rendered 
them unable to accomplish more. As the Bishop of Astorga said in 
a letter to Grranvelle — " They are not as we would have wished, to 
correct the abuses and scandals of the church, which cause so many 
to fall into error, but we have to do what we are permitted to do, not 
what we would wish to do." 1 Heretics, indeed, who asserted that there 
was in reality no intention of suppressing concubinage, could point 
in justification to the curious fact that, while previous councils had 
provided heavy penalties against the concubines of priests, that of 
Trent passed them over as though they were guiltless. 

Strange as it may seem, the anathema so decidedly enunciated by 
the council did not deter Albert of Bavaria and the Emperor Ferdi- 
nand from continuing their efforts to procure for their subjects the 
benefit of a relaxation of the canon. The decision of a majority of 
the doctors of the council favoring the papal power of dispensation 
suggested the mode of obtaining it. Although the form of the canons 
had been adopted on the 7th of August, and the previous proceedings 
left no doubt as to their authoritative promulgation in full session? 
yet, on the 26th of August, the nuncio Yisconti writes that he had 
heard from his colleague Delfino, then in Vienna, that the three 
ecclesiastical electors (Mainz, Treves, and Cologne), the Archbishop 
of Salzburg and the Duke of Bavaria had held a conference, in which 
it was resolved to unite with the emperor in an appeal for Bulls per- 
mitting the marriage of the clergy and the use of the cup by the 
laity. 2 Early in September the emperor wrote to his ambassadors, 



1 Ma noi facciamo quello che ci si 
permette di fare, non quello che vor- 
remmo. — Examinatore, Eirenze, 1868, 
p. 15. 



2 Lett. No. lxix. (Ed. Amsterd. 
II. 299). This and the concluding 
letters are not in Mansi's edition. 



540 



THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, 



stating that lie had called together at Vienna the deputies of the 
electors and princes of the empire, where, after mature deliberation, 
it had been determined to ask the cup and clerical marriage of the 
pope and not of the council ; that a protocol had already been drawn 
up, which accompanied the despatch, but as it was a matter not yet 
fully settled, he desired it to be communicated to no one but the 
Count de Luna, the ambassador of Philip II. 1 

It was not, however, until February, 1564, after the conclusion of 
the council, which brought its weary labors to an end on the 4th of 
December, 1563, that Ferdinand and Albert presented their requests 
to Pius IV. The two papers were essentially the same. In the 
name of the princes of the empire, after demanding the communion 
in both elements for the laity, they proceeded to argue earnestly for 
the other concession. Perhaps the decided opposition of the council 
to the principle of sacerdotal marriage had produced an influence 
upon them ; perhaps they had found themselves obliged to yield some 
of their own views in order to secure the cooperation of the Teutonic 
hierarchy ; be this as it may, their demands were greatly abated. In 
place of asking, as before, the privilege for the clergy at large, they 
now reduced their entreaties to the simple request of allowing such 
Catholic priests as had entered into matrimony, to retain their wives 
and perform their functions, which they assured the pope was abso- 
lutely essential to the preservation of the fragments of the church 
still doing battle with the prevailing heresies throughout Germany. 2 



1 Pallavicini, Lib. xxn. c. 10. 

2 Goldast. II. 380.— Le Plat, VI. 
310, 312. 

It is observable from this that many 
priests left the church and married 
without formally embracing the Lu- 
theran faith, and a return of these was 
anticipated from a relaxation of the 
canons. Others, as may be gathered 
from various references above, married 
and still performed their regular duties. 
Of these, some no doubt acted in virtue 
of dispensations granted by the nuncios 
of Paul III., after the promulgation of 
the Interim, but many did so in utter 
contempt of discipline. An illustrative 
example of the latter class may be 
found in the well-known Stanislas 
Orzechowski, whose marriage, notwith- 
standing his prominent position, shows 
the laxity of opinion which prevailed 
on the subject. As priest and canon 
of Przemysl in Poland, his marriage 



naturally gave great offence to his col- 
leagues, which was not diminished by 
a dissertation which he wrote in favor 
of priestly marriage. This, he subse- 
quently claimed, had been prepared for 
the purpose of laying before the coun- 
cil of Trent, and its publication had 
arisen from the indiscretion of a friend 
to whom he had entrusted it. Some- 
what contaminated with the new ideas 
by his education at Wittenberg, he 
sturdily refused to give up either his wife 
or his position. His consequent excom- 
munication he disregarded, though ac- 
cording to his own account he gave up 
on marrying his benefices and the 
ministry (Lettera a Guilio III. trad, di 
B. Leoni, Milano, anno. VI.), and not- 
withstanding this he had a very narrow 
escape from the death-penalty, and his 
condemnation excited a commotion 
throughout Poland that was very favor- 
able to the spread of the reformed 
opinions (Orichovii Annales, pp. 71-84, 



NEGOTIATIONS 



541 



They likewise asked that in such places as could not obtain a suffi- 
ciency of pastors, the bishops should be empowered to ordain married 
laymen of approved piety, learning, and fitness. 

These appeals were successful as far as communion in both elements 
was concerned, for, on April 16th, Pius granted that concession under 
certain conditions. The subject of priestly marriage, however, he 
still postponed, and on June 17th we find Ferdinand writing to 
Cardinal Morone, to express his thanks for what he had obtained, 
and to urge the other subject on the consideration of the papal 
court. He had instructed his ambassador, he said, to press it 
earnestly, and he besought the Cardinal to aid in so pious and 
advantageous a work. 1 

Nor was this the only means which Ferdinand, then verging 



108, Ed. 1854). At length the feeling 
against the pretensions of the church 
became so strong that the Diet of 1552 
removed all the civil and temporal 
penalties of excommunication, so that 
he triumphed for the time. When in 
1556, the legate Lippomani held a 
synod, at Lovictz, he called to account 
those who had connived at so great an 
irregularity. They denied granting 
the dispensation, saying that they had 
only suspended the censures until the 
pleasure of the pope should be known ; 
but at the same time many prelates 
used all their influence with Lippomani 
to obtain one. Lippomani declared 
that he had no power to grant it, nor 
would he do so if he could, seeing that 
Orzechowski defended himself on hereti- 
cal grounds (Concil. Lovitiens. — 
Labbei et Coleti Supp. T. V. p. 702). 
In 1561 Orzechowski, in his address to 
the synod of Warsaw, admitted that he 
had sinned, but claimed that he had 
been punished sufficiently — "Si quis 
igitur a me quaerat ; Num uxorem 
sacerdos duxerim? Duxisse me fatebor. 
Peccasti igitur? Peccavi. Poenas ergo 
peccati debes ? Debui et persolvi ' ' 
(Doctrina de Sacerd. Ccelibatu, Varsa- 
vise, 1801). He therefore complained 
of the persecutions to which he was 
exposed on account of his wife, and he 
petitioned both the pope and the council 
of Trent for a dispensation. While the 
Tridentine fathers refused it, some au- 
thors assert that it was granted by 
Pius IV. to him as an exceptional case 
" tibi soli Orichovio," but careful inves- 
tigation has failed to discover the Bull, 



and, according to Zaccaria the pope 
merely sent secret orders to his legate 
Commendone not to allow Orzechowski 
to be molested, but at the same time to 
give no publicity to an act of tolerance 
in contravention of the canons of the 
council of Trent (Gregoire, Hist du 
Mariage des Pretres en France, pp. 
51-55). 

In his answer to Fricius, Orzechowski 
assumes that he was absolved from his 
excommunication by the Legate — 
" Prasterea a sententia excommunica- 
tionis, qua eram a Joanne Episcopo 
Premisliensi, ob hanc eandem uxorem, 
ex ecclesia pulsus, a Legato Komani 
Petri absolutus cum sim, nihil feci 
contra ilium " (ap. Doctrin. de Sacerd. 
Ccelibat. p. 24). He also alleges the 
extraordinary excuse that he abandoned 
the priesthood before his marriage. 

The history of Orzechowski, with 
probably a less fortunate result, is no 
doubt that of innumerable others, 
whose obscurity has prevented their 
sufferings from being known beyond 
their own narrow circle. 

Strype (Annals, I. 485-6) asserts 
that after the accession of Queen Eliza- 
beth the Catholic emissaries in Eng- 
land had a general dispensation to 
marry, in order to assist their conceal- 
ment and to further the design of creat- 
ing schism in the Anglican church. 
He gives as his authority one Malachi 
Malone, a converted Irish friar. 

1 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Tri- 
dent. VI. 331. 



542 



THE COUNCIL OF TKENT, 



rapidly to the grave, adopted to attain the object of his unwearied 
pursuit. George Wicelius had thrown aside the monastic gown in 
1531, to embrace the errors of Lutheranism, but had returned to the 
old religion. His learning and piety earned for him a deserved rep- 
utation, and elevated him to the position of imperial councillor, where 
his talents were devoted to the endless task of bringing about a 
reconciliation between the churches. George Cassander, equally 
eminent, had never incurred the imputation of apostasy, but had 
labored with tireless industry to convert his erring brethren from 
heresy to the true faith. Men like these might perhaps be heard 
when the voice of princes and prelates, actuated by motives of per- 
sonal advantage, met a deaf ear ; and Ferdinand applied to them for 
disquisitions on the subject. 1 Before their labors were concluded 
the monarch was dead (July 25, 1564), but his son Maximilian II. 
inherited his father's ideas, and gladly made use of the opinions 
which the learned Catholic doctors had no hesitation in expressing. 

Both took strong ground against celibacy. Cassander, while 
defending the church for originally introducing the rule, deplored 
the terrible and abominable scandals which its untimely enforcement 
caused throughout the church, and he urged that the reasons which 
had led to its introduction not only existed no longer, but had even 
become arguments for its abrogation, since now the choice lay only 
between married priests and concubinarians. He declared it to be 
the source of numerous evils, chief among which was promiscuous 
and unbridled licentiousness, and he added that the already scanty 
ranks of the priesthood were deprived of the accessions which were 
so necessary, since men of a religious turn of mind were prevented 
from taking orders by the universal wickedness which prevailed 
under the excuse of celibacy, while pious parents kept their sons 
from entering the church for fear of debauching their morals. On 
the other hand, those who sought a life of ease and license were 
attracted to the holy calling which they disgraced. He was 'even 
willing to permit marriage in orders, arguing that it was only a 



1 This was not his first attempt of 
this kind. In 1540 he had called upon 
John Cochlaeus to examine the Confes- 
sion of Augsburg and report as to what 
points were reconcilable with Cathol- 
icism and what were not. Cochlaeus 
responded in an elaborate dissertation, 
wherein he took strong ground against 
abandoning celibacy, but admitted that 



he was utterly unable to suggest any 
remedy for the evils resulting from it, 
— especially the "scandalosus presby- 
terorum in seculo concubinatus, prae- 
sertim apud plebanos in pagis, qui com- 
muniter cum ancillis rem domesticam 
gubernare necessitate quadam cogun- 
tur."— LePlat, II. 667. 



EFFORTS OF MAXIMILIAN II 



543 



question of canon law, in which faith and doctrine were not involved. 
As regards the monastic orders, while fully appreciating the prin- 
ciples upon which the system was founded, he warmly deplored the 
corruption engendered by wealth and luxury. Though the convents 
contained many pious and holy men, still for the most part religion 
was forgotten in the observance of ceremonies that had lost their 
significance, and nothing could be more licentious and profane than 
the life led in many of the monasteries. 1 Wicelius was equally severe 
in his denunciations of the clerical licentiousness attributable to the 
rule of celibacy, and concluded his tract by attacking the supineness, 
blindness, and perversity of the prelates who suffered such foulness 
to exist everywhere among the priesthood, in contempt of Christ, 
and to the burdening of their consciences. 2 

It was already evident that both the great objects for which the 
council of Trent had ostensibly been assembled were failures ; that 
it would effect as little for the purification of the church as for the 
reconciliation of the heretics. Perhaps Maximilian felt that under 
these circumstances no one could deny the necessity of such changes 
as would at least afford a chance of the reformation that could no 
longer be expected of the Tridentine canons ; perhaps he felt strength- 
ened by the support of his ecclesiastical counsellors and controver- 
sialists ; perhaps, with the zealous hopefulness of youth, he felt a 
confidence of which age and many disappointments had deprived 
his father ; or perhaps he was encouraged by the concession to his 
subjects and to those of Albert of Bavaria, of the communion in 
both elements, not knowing that in two short years it would be 
withdrawn. Certain it is that in a negotiation with the Bishop of 
Yintimiglia, papal nuncio at his court, he lost no time in renewing, 
with increased energy, the effort to obtain the recognition of married 
priests. After the departure of the nuncio, he addressed, in No- 
vember, 1564, a most pressing demand to Pius IV., in which he 
declared that the matter brooked no further postponement; that 
throughout Germany, and especially in his dominions, there was the 
greatest need of proper ministers and pastors ; that there was no 
other measure which would retain them in the Catholic church, from 
which, day by day, they were withdrawing, principally from this 



1 G-. Cassandri Consult, xxiii., xxv. 
(Le Plat, VI. 761-2, 783-4). 

2 "Wicelii Via Eegia, De Conjug. 
Sacerd. 



Both these tracts were printed with 
other controversial matter, by Her- 
mann Conring, 4to. Helmstadt, 1569. 



544 THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 

cause. He assured the Holy Father that the danger was constantly 
increasing, and that he feared a further delay would render even this 
remedy powerless to prevent the total destruction of the old religion. 
If only this were granted to the clergy, even as the cup had been 
communicated to the laity, he hoped for an immediate improvement. 
The bishops could then exercise their authority over those who at 
present were beyond their control, as unrecognized by the church ; 
and so thoroughly was this lawless condition of affairs understood 
that a refuge was sought in his provinces by those disreputable 
pastors who were banished from the Lutheran states on account of 
their disorderly lives. 1 His brother, the Archduke Charles, was 
equally urgent, in a letter which he addressed, a few days later, to 
the Pope, repeating the same arguments, and assuring him that the 
only hope for the true religion in his dominions was to find some 
means of admitting the services of a married clergy. 2 

Ferdinand and Maximilian were actuated in these persevering 
efforts not merely by the desire of gratifying the wishes of their 
people, or of remedying the depravity of the ecclesiastical body. It 
had been a favorite project with the father, warmly adopted by the 
son, to heal the differences between the two religions, and to restore 
to the church its ancient and prosperous unity. In their opinion, 
and in that of many eminent men, the main obstacle to this was the 
question of celibacy. It was evidently hopeless to expect this sacri- 
fice of the Lutheran pastors, while numerous members of the Cath- 
olic church regarded the change as essential to the purification of 
their own establishment. The only mode of effecting so desirable a 
reconciliation was therefore to persuade the pope to exercise the 
power of dispensation which the council of Trent had admitted to 
be inherent in his high office. The spirit of the papal court, how- 
ever, was that which Pallavicini attributes to the council — that the 
heretics were to be cut off, and not to be cajoled into returning. 
Pius IY. himself was not personally averse to the plan so persist- 
ently urged upon him, but those around him saw greater dangers in 
concession than in refusal. De Thou, indeed, says that he was 
inclined to grant the privilege for the territories of Maximilian, but 
that Philip II., at the instigation of Cardinal Pacheco, fearing an 
example so dangerous to his turbulent and excitable subjects in the 



i Goldast. II. 381. 2 Le Plat, VI. 335. 



ALL CONCESSIONS EEFUSED 



545 



Netherlands, opposed it strenuously, and sent Don Pedro d'Avila to 
Rome, who persuaded the pope to elude the demand, by keeping 
matters in suspense, and by holding out prospects of accommodation 
destined never to be accomplished. 1 

This is probably not strictly correct. Maximilian's demand had 
perhaps been rendered more pressing than respectful by the necessity 
of conciliating his people in view of the war with John of Transyl- 
vania and the Turks. Its tone was not relished at Rome, nor could 
the papacy be expected to listen with as much patience to remon- 
strances from a prince who had just grasped the reins of power as it 
had to those of the mature and experienced Ferdinand, especially 
as Maximilian had been shrewdly suspected of secretly leaning to 
the tenets of the Reformers. 2 The response to Maximilian was there- 
fore of the sharpest. Pius replied, arguing against clerical marriage 
and positively declaring that it would not be tolerated, 3 and to pre- 
vent further trouble Cardinal Commendone was sent to warn him 
that any interference with the interests of religion would be visited 
with the severest penalties ; in fact, he was threatened with depriva- 
tion of the imperial title, and a convocation of the Catholic princes 
for the purpose of electing a successor. 4 

The Catholic church thus definitely accepted the ancient canons, 
erected them into an article of faith, and resolved to meet whatever 
consequences might flow from their maintenance. In the existing 
condition of clerical morals, we are almost justified in saying that it 
assumed the position attributed by St. Bernard to the Manichasans 
of the twelfth century — that they took vows of continence in order 
to cover their incontinence, and that marriage was the only sexual 
relation which they regarded as a sin. 5 We shall see hereafter what 
were the results of this abnormal position. 



1 De Thou, Lib. xxxvii. 

2 In 1560 Ferdinand addressed to 
Pius IV. an earnest request that a 
special dispensation might he granted 
to Maximilian, then king of Bohemia, 
authorizing him to receive the com- 
munion in both elements. In this he 
stated that his son's scruples of con- 
science on the subject were so strong 
that he had abstained for three years 
from taking the sacrament. In the 
secret instructions to the Imperial am- 
bassador accompanying this request, 



the latter is furnished with elaborate 
reasons to prove that the suspicions 
entertained at Rome of Maximilian's 
orthodoxy were unfounded. — Le Plat, 
Monument. Concil. Trident. IV. 619- 
23. 

3 Le Plat, VI. 336. 

4 Struvii Corp. Hist. German; II. 
1097. 

5 Bernardi Sermo. 66, in Cantica, 
cap. i. 



35 



XXIX. 
THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH. 



The great council, on which so long had hung the hopes of the 
Christian world, had at last been held. The reformation of the 
church, postponed by the skilful policy of the popes, had been 
reached in the closing sessions, and had been hurriedly provided for. 
As we have seen, the regulations which concerned the morals of the 
clergy were sufficient for their purpose, if only they could be en- 
forced, yet as they were but the hundredth repetition of an endeavor 
to conquer human nature, which had always previously failed, even 
those who enacted them could have felt little faith in their efficacy. 
August Baumgartner, the Bavarian ambassador, in his address to 
the council, June 27th, 1562, had alluded to the prevailing belief 
that any comprehensive effort to enforce the chastity required by the 
canons would result in driving the mass of the Catholic clergy over 
to Protestantism. 1 Since continence was held by them to be im- 
possible, it was thought that they would prefer to marry their con- 
cubines as Lutherans rather than give them up as Catholics. Pos- 
sibly the fear of such untoward result may explain the slender effect 
which can be discerned from a scheme of reform so laboriously 
reached and so pompously heralded as the panacea for the woes 
which were destroying the church. 

Although Catherine de Medicis and her sons refused to allow the 
council to be formally published in France, yet she permitted its 
decrees to be freely circulated, and her bishops Were at liberty to 
adopt them as the code of discipline in their dioceses. 2 The diffi- 



1 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Tri- 
dent. V. 340. 

2 The council of Trent has never 
been received in Prance. For a re- 



sume of the efforts made to obtain its 
adoption and their uniform lack of 
success, see Chavart, Le Celibat des 
Pretres, pp. 507-12. 



EECEPTIOISr OF THE COUNCIL. 



547 



culties raised by the Emperor Maximilian on the score of priestly- 
celibacy were met with a vigor on the part of Pius IV. which savored 
of the thirteenth rather than the sixteenth century. Philip II., after 
some hesitation, ordered the reception of the council in all his do- 
minions, which extended from Naples to the North Sea j 1 and Poland, 
despite some opposition from an ambitious prelate, submitted to it 
before the year 1564 was ended. 2 

As an authoritative exposition of the law of the church of Christ, 
conceived and elaborated under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and 
commanded for implicit observance by the Vicegerent of God ; as 
the expression of the needs and wants of the Catholic faith, wrought 
by the concentrated energy and wisdom of the leading doctors of 
Christendom, and transmitted for practical application through the 
wondrous machinery of the Catholic hierarchy, it should have had 
an immediate influence on the evils which it was intended to eradi- 
cate. Those evils had confessedly done much to create and foster 
the schism under which the church was reeling ; their magnitude 
was admitted by all, and no one ventured to defend or to palliate 
them. Their removal was acknowledged to be a necessity of the 
gravest character, and every adherent of Catholicism was bound to 
lend his aid to the good work. What, then, was accomplished by 
the Council which had for so long a period labored ostensibly with 
the object of restoring Latin Christianity to its primitive purity ? 

Pius IV. rested satisfied with promulgating and confirming the 
decrees of the council, and waited to see them produce their destined 
effect. In 1566, however, he was succeeded by Pius V., whose ex- 
perience as grand inquisitor had doubtless rendered him familiar with 



1 In August. 1564, Philip II. had 
ordered its publication in the Low 
Countries, but Margaret of Parma had 
hesitated to obey in consequence of the 
intense opposition excited by its inter- 
ference with local liberties and fran- 
chises, as it completed and crowned the 
centralizing policy which rendered the 
papacy supreme over all local churches. 
It was not until Dec. 18, 1565, that it 
was finally promulgated, under impera- 
tive commands from Philip. It is char- 
acteristic of Philip's habitual double- 
dealing, however, that while his public 
orders commanded the reception of the 
Council without exception, he secretly 
reserved the rights of himself and his 
subjects (Le Plat, Concil. Trident. VII. 
Praef. p. vi.). 



2 By a Bull dated July 18, 1564, 
Pius IV. fixed May 1, 1564, as the 
time when the Tridentine canons be- 
came the law of the church. His 
letter to the Archbishop of Bremen 
with an ofiicial copy and directions 
as to its promulgation, is dated Oct. 
3d of the same year (Hartzheim VII. 
25). 

It would seem to be a work of super- 
erogation for a learned Italian lawyer 
to write an elaborate treatise, dedicated 
to Pius IV., against the abolition of 
celibacy, yet Marquardo dei Susani 
thought it worth while to do this 
in his " Tractatus de Ccelibatu Sacer- 
dotum non abrogando," 4to. Venice, 
1565. 



548 



THE POST-TEIDENTINE CHURCH. 



the prevailing neglect of ecclesiastical discipline, while his unbending 
temper made him rigorous in his determination to restore it. One 
of the earliest acts of his pontificate was the publication of a Bull 
commanding the ordinaries of all churches to put in force the Tri- 
dentine canons respecting concubinary priests, thus showing that 
already they were treated with contempt, 1 while a special mandate 
on the subject, addressed to the Archbishop of Salzburg, describes 
the unchecked corruption of the German priesthood as threatening 
the speedy destruction of the Catholic religion there. 2 Two years 
later he found it necessary to issue another Bull, directed against 
darker crimes, the deplorable prevalence of which can hardly be 
attributed to any additional and unaccustomed vigor in removing the 
female companions of the clergy, 3 for the Archbishop of Salzburg, 
in reply to a fresh command to reform his church, had replied that 
he and his suffragans had never ceased to attempt it, but that all their 
efforts had been fruitless and that he despaired of success. 4 Even a 
worse experience befell Bernardt Rasfeldt, Bishop of Munster, who, 
in his synod of 1566, published a papal brief commanding the dis- 
missal of clerical concubines, for his action roused the fury of his 
canons to such a degree that they forced him to resign his bishopric 
and spend the rest of his days in obscurity. He was succeeded by 
Johann von Hoya, Bishop of Osnabruck and President of the Im- 
perial Chamber, a man distinguished by his birth and learning, but 
who speedily wearied of the conflict and sought peace by imitating 
the example of his subordinates. 5 

In 1571 Pius undertook another subject of reform. Notwith- 
standing the decree of the council that any action of clerical fathers 
for the benefit of their offspring should be considered as fraudulent, 



1 Bull. Cum primum § 12 (Mag. 
Bull. Roman. II. 180). 

2 " Plerosque . . . abjecto Dei timore 
et sine ulla hominum verecundia, con- 
cubinas palam habere, easque perinde, 
ac si legitimse eorum uxores essent, 
in ecclesiis et aliis locis publicis con- 
spici, vulgo iisdem, quibus illi vocan- 
tur, officiorum et dignitatum nomini- 
bus appellatas ; eoque hsereses tanto- 
pere crevisse, ac multiplicatas fuisse; 
quod ecclesiastici tam turpiter et ne- 
quiter vivendo, omnem plane existima- 
tionem amiserint, et in summam non 
apud haereticos modo, sed etiam Ca- 
tholicos contemptionem venerint . . . 
Nisi enim tam nefandum concubinatus 



vitium extirpetur, nullam spem reli- 
quam esse videmus reprimi posse hsere- 
ses. Sed timemus (quod Deus avertat) 
ne brevi tempore istse, quae supersunt, 
Catholicorum reliquiae amittantur, et 
omnis prorsus Catholicse religionis 
cultus apud vos extinguatur." — Breve 
Pii Y. ad Archiep. Salzburg. (Hartz- 
heim VII. 231). 

3 Bull. Horrendum (Mag. Bull. Ro- 
man. II. 267). 

4 Dalham, Concil. Salisburgens. p. 
556. 

5 De Thou, Hist. Univers. Lib. 
xxxvin. ann. 1566. 



EEFOEMS OF PIUS V 



549 



the transmission of ecclesiastical property to such illegitimate heirs 
continued almost unchecked, and Pius recognized the necessity of 
further legislation to diminish the abuse. His Bull on the subject is 
drawn up with a care and minuteness which show the magnitude of 
the evil and the extreme difficulty of preventing it. 1 Nor was there 
only the need of preserving the possessions of the church ; the scan- 
dal of sacerdotal families required repression, and all other means 
having apparently failed, in 1572 another decretal declared that such 
children were incapable of receiving even the private and patrimonial 
property of their fathers. 2 These successive edicts are a full confes- 
sion that the long-promised reformation was a failure, and that, while 
the council might regulate doctrine, it was utterly powerless to enforce 
discipline. The papal fulminations proved equally powerless, and 
Rome itself apparently winked at contraventions of the rule, which 
could be rendered profitable by the prerogative of issuing dispensa- 
tions. In 1610 the Synod of Augsburg found it necessary to declare 
that it would enforce the Tridentine canons prohibiting the illegiti- 
mate sons of priests from holding preferment in their father's bene- 
fices, notwithstanding what dispensations they might produce to the 
contrary. 3 

Yet even these legislative labors of the pope are less instructive 
than the war which he commenced against the courtesans of Rome. 
If the new enactments could have been expected to command respect, 
the example should have been set in the Holy City itself, but Pius 
IV. had allowed the most public and scandalous immorality to flourish 
unchecked under his immediate supervision. In 1538 the " Con- 
silium de Emendanda Ecclesia" had animadverted upon the cynical 
licentiousness of the Roman clergy in terms which show that not 
much improvement had taken place since Petrarch's description of 
the papal court, 4 and the thirty years which had intervened had not 
served to purify it. Pius V. felt the disgrace keenly, and resolved 
on its suppression. He at first proposed to put an end to the nefari- 



1 Bull. Quoe ordini. — How difficult 
was the task thus undertaken is ad- 
mitted in the Bull itself — " Quia vero 
difficile nimis esset, prassentes quocum- 
que illis opus erit proferre " (Ibid. II. 
323-4). 

2 Bull. Ad Eomanum. (Mag. Bull. 
Koman. II. 325). 

8 Synod. August, ann. 1610 P. III. 
c. iii. § 1 (Hartzheim IX. 59). 



* In hac etiam urbe meretrices ut 
matrons incedunt per urbem, seu mula 
vehuntur, quas affectantur de media die 
nobiles familiares cardinalium clerici- 
que. Nulla in urbe vidimus hanc cor- 
ruptionem, prseterquam in hac omnium 
exemplari, habitant etiam insignes 
aedes : corrigendus etiam hie turpis 
abusus. — Le Plat, Monument. Concil. 
Trident. II. 604. 



550 THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH. 

ous trade, and to banish all the public women who would not give a 
pledge of reformation by an immediate marriage. Forced to relin- 
quish this measure as impracticably harsh, he contented himself by 
restricting their residence to certain houses, and forbade their plying 
their vocation in the streets by day or night. Although he thus 
admitted the necessity of the evil, and endeavored to restrain only 
its public manifestation, even this moderate attempt at reform was 
deemed insufferable. The clergy were ashamed to offer opposition 
openly, but found no difficulty in urging the Senate to strenuous 
resistance. The remonstrance made by that body shows not only 
the frightful extent of the prevalent immorality, but also the settled 
conviction that immorality was inseparable from celibacy. It was 
represented that if the proposed rules were enforced, the prosperity 
of the city would be destroyed and the rents of houses be reduced 
to nothing ; moreover, it was urged that, amid so vast a number of 
men condemned to celibacy, if any such restrictions were put in 
force, it would be impossible to preserve the virtue of the wives arid 
daughters of the citizens. The contest was stubbornly continued 
until at length Pius was driven to declare that, if any further diffi- 
culty were interposed, he would abandon the city. 1 

In spite of these well-meant but nugatory efforts of Pius, the 
immorality of the papal court itself and of its highest dignitaries 
was admitted by a Bull which Sixtus V. promulgated in 1586. In 
decreeing that no one who had children, even if they were legitimate, 
should be eligible to the cardinalate, he took care to let the world 
understand the cause of the restriction by declaring that in no other 
way could evidence be had of the observance of their vows. 2 

If Pius V. met with opposition in the task of purifying the Augean 
stable of Rome, St. Charles Borromeo, encouraged and stimulated 
by his example, found himself involved in a more dangerous quarrel 
when he attempted, in the equally demoralized city of Milan, to 
enforce respect for the decrees of Trent. In 1569 he undertook to 
reform the canons of S. Maria della Scala, whose licentious mode of 
life was a scandal to the faithful. So persistently did they deny their 
subjection to his archiepiscopal jurisdiction, that, after a long discus- 
sion, his only resource for vindicating his authority was excommuni- 



1 De Thou, Lib. xxxix. I Eoman. II. 567)— " Certum nequeat 

. t, ,. t, , ,,, -nn suse testimonium continentise exhibere. " 

2 Bull. Postquam verus (Mag. Bull. I 



EEFOKMS OF ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 551 

cation. The contumacious canons were still indisposed to yield, and, 
assembling in their church, they maltreated his messenger. Think- 
ing that his presence might bring them to reason, he ventured him- 
self to expostulate with them, and found them drawn up in their 
cemetery, with arms in their hands, and supported by soldiers whom 
they had hired. On reaching the gate, he dismounted from his mule 
and advanced towards them with his cross, which he had snatched 
from his cross-bearer. Unabashed by this symbol at once of religion 
and authority, the mutinous canons rushed upon him with shouts of 
" Spagna," " Spagna," brandishing their weapons and discharging 
their fire-arms at the cross in his hands — fortunately without injuring 
him. Having thus driven him off, they continued for some time in 
open rebellion, until they were at length obliged to submit, when 
Pius V. and Philip II. united their power in support of St. Charles. 1 
Still greater was the peril to which the saint was exposed in his 
quarrel with the Umiliati. They were a branch of the Benedictine 
order, founded in 1180 by the Milanese who escaped the destruction 
of their city by Frederic Barbarossa. Sharing in the general license 
of the age, the excesses of the Umiliati became so infamous that 
they surpassed in turpitude the worst exploits of the unbridled youth 
of the city. Supported by the decretals of Pius, in 1568 St. 
Charles undertook to reduce the order to the observance of monastic 
rule. The Umiliati resisted with so much energy and success that, 
after two years of contest, they were still defiant. Regarding St. 
Charles as the cause of all their troubles, Girolamo Lignana, Pro- 
vost of S. Cristoforo di Vercelli, who assumed their leadership in 
1570, engaged a monk of the order named Girolamo Donati to 
murder him. The blackness of the deed was not relieved by the 
circumstances under which it was attempted. While the holy arch- 
bishop was absorbed at midnight in his devotions, Donati stole into 
the oratory and discharged full upon him an arquebuss loaded with 
slugs. Some of the missiles struck St. Charles, but rebounded to 
the floor, leaving him unhurt, and the miraculous nature of his 
escape was proved by the depth to which others penetrated the walls. 
At this moment the policy of Philip the Catholic supported the dis- 
affected and rebellious monks, and for some time yet they escaped 
the retribution due to their many crimes, but at length those con- 



1 Fleury, Liv. clxxi. chap. 104 et seq. 



552 



THE POST-TKIDENTINE CHURCH. 



cerned in the attempted murder were caught and executed, and the 
order of the Umiliati was broken up. 1 

These examples sufficiently show how little the great body of 
ecclesiastics was disposed to submit to a curtailment of the license 
which had become traditional, and how little respect was paid either 
to the commands of the great (Ecumenic Council, or to the general 
and local authorities. It is easy to imagine that few prelates were 
so disposed to court martyrdom as the saintly Charles, and that 
churches with less conscientious pastors easily found means to 
purchase or compel exemption from the laws which bound them to 
morality. In fact, President d'Espeisses, in his memorial presented 
to Henry III. in 1583, against the publication of the council in 
France, drew one of his arguments from the greater corruption of 
the Italian church, where, though the council was received without 
demur, yet none of its orders reforming the morals of the clergy 
received the least attention. 2 That the Tridentine canons in this 
respect were wholly inefficacious throughout Italy, and that the 
officials, with rare exceptions, did not venture to enforce them, can 
indeed be seen in the series of provincial councils held during the 
remainder of the century, from Lombardy to Naples. 

The papacy had succeeded in crushing the reformers who had 
responded in so many Italian cities to the uprising in Germany ; it 
had then convoked and managed at its will the great Congress of 
Catholic Christendom which was to put an end at once and forever 
to all the evils which had led to the schism ; it had every opportunity 
and every motive for vindicating itself from the aspersions of its 
enemies, and yet we see it at once recur to the old machinery of 
local councils enacting canons whose frequency and wordy severity 
are the inverse measure of their efficiency. Had the promises of 
reform so liberally made been possible in their fulfilment, there had 



1 Muratori, Annal. aim. 1569. — 
Henrion, Hist, des Ordres Keligieux 
I. 196. — Fleury, Liv. clxxi. chap. 26. 
— De Thou, Lib. l. — The calm Mura- 
tori stigmatizes the Umiliati as '' troppo 
scorretto e corrotto ordine," and Hen- 
rion, who cannot certainly be regarded 
as a prejudiced authority, declares that 
"les exces des Humilies surpassoient 
ceux des laiques les plus debauches." 
Pius V., in his Bull suppressing the 
order, is equally emphatic, and vouches 
for the truth of the miracle by which 
the life of St. Charles was preserved. — 



Bull. Quemadmodum sollicitus (Mag. 
Bull. Eom. II. 326). 

2 Vu que par toute l'ltalie on le vit 
reconnoitre pour 1 'usage et observations 
de toutes les ordonnances, on n'en voit 
une seule entretenue de celles qui 
concerne la reformation de la vie et 
mceurs des ecclesiastiques . . . Et ce 
peut dire pour ce regard que l'eglise 
n'est en autre lieu de la Chretiente si 
dereglee et diflforme qu'es pays ou le 
pape a commandement et puissance 
absolu.- 



OPPOSITION" TO THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 



553 



been no need of further legislation. A convocation of the ecclesi- 
astics of each province to receive and publish the decrees of Trent 
would have been all-sufficient. When, therefore, we see the endless 
iteration with which the guilty clergy were threatened with the Tri- 
dentine canons, and with other new or revivified penalties — as at the 
councils of Milan in 1565 and 1582, 1 and at those of Manfredonia 
in 1567, of Ravenna in 1568, of Urbino in 1569, of Florence in 
1573, of Naples in 1576, of Consenza in 1579, of Salerno in 1596, 
of S. Severino in 1597, and of Melfi in 1597 2 — we can only con- 
clude that the evil was irremediable, in spite of the well-meant efforts 
to suppress it, or to throw off the responsibility of its existence. 

In fact, the manner in which the council of Trent was greeted by 
the clergy may be judged from its treatment in the archiepiscopate of 
Utrecht. Though Philip II. had authoritatively ordered its recep- 
tion in 1565, we find the Duke of Alva in May, 1568, issuing his 
commands to the prelates of the five churches of Utrecht to offer no 
further opposition to it. Even so stern a ruler could not obtain 
immediate obedience, however, to so obnoxious a series of regulations, 
and they responded by pleading their ancient privileges. This 
availed them little, for in June he replied that his instructions were 
positive, and he proceeded to enforce them by sending royal commis- 
sioners to the province, empowered to carry them out. In July, 
therefore, the Archbishop assembled his clergy and in conjunction 
with the commissioners issued a series of regulations designed to 
give effective force to the canons of the council. Visiting nunneries 
and haunting taverns, joining in dances and hunting and indecent 
songs were forbidden. The clergy were ordered to shave their beards 
and to give up their concubines, whom they were not to retake or 
to replace. Even yet they did not yield, but while they were 
ashamed to claim the right to keep their female companions, they 
demurred as to the sacrifice of their beards, and the Archbishop was 
obliged to issue another peremptory command. 3 



1 Concil. Mediolanens. ann. 1565 P. 
II. Const, xiv. (Harduin. X. 661) — 
Concil. Mediolanens. ann. 1582 Const, 
xiv. (Ibid. p. 1117). 

2 Concil Sipontin. ann. 1567 De 
Yit. et Honest. Cleric. — Concil. Ka- 
vennat. ann. 1568 De Yit. et Honest. 
Cleric, c. v. — Concil. Urbinat. ann. 
1569 De Yit. et Honest. Cleric, c. vi. 
— Concil. Morent. ann. 1573 Kubr. 
xxxvn. c. 3, 4.— Concil. Neapol. ann. 



1576 cap. xxii. — Concil. Consentin. 
ann. 1579 Sess. iv. — Concil. Salernit. 
ann. 1596 cap. xviii. — Concil. S. Se- 
verin. ann. 1597 De Yit. et Honest. 
Cleric. — Concil. Amalfltan. ann. 1597 
De Yit. et Honest. Cleric, c. v. — (Lab- 
bei et Coleti Supplement. T. Y. pp. 
827-1331). 

3 The documents are in Le Plat, 
Monument. Concil. Trident. VII. 199- 
201. For the condition of morals in 



554 



THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH. 



Throughout the whole extent of Central Europe the Tridentine 
canons met with a like slackness of obedience. Even the question 
of sacerdotal marriage, which had been raised by the council to the 
dignity of a point of faith, was stubbornly contested, and was not 
yielded until after a protracted struggle. 

In 1569 we find the synod of the extensive and important province 
of Salzburg virtually dividing its clergy into two classes — those who 
haunt the taverns under pretext of getting their meals, but really 
for the purpose of indulging in drunken riots with their parishioners, 
and those who keep houses, with concubines under the guise of female 
servants, whom they secretly marry, and who are openly known by 
their husbands' names. To meet this condition of affairs, the synod 
devised an elaborate system by which the richer clergy were directed 
to keep as domestics respectable middle-aged married women with 
their husbands, while the poorer ecclesiastics were to club together 
for the same purpose. 1 This expedient proved as fruitless as its pre- 
decessors, for in 1572 Gregory XIII. complained to the archbishop 
that in many places priests who were known to be married were per- 
mitted by their bishops to celebrate Mass and to handle the sacred 
elements. 2 In spite of all this the evil continued unabated, and in 
1616 the Archbishop of Salzburg, in his instructions for a general 
visitation, ordered that all priests should remove their concubines to 
a distance of at least six miles, and should not allow their illegiti- 
mate children to live openly with them, except under special license 
from him. 3 

In 1565, Anthony, Archbishop of Prague, promulgated the council 
of Trent in his provincial synod. He was a man of more than ordi- 
nary vigor ; he had been the imperial orator at Trent, understood 
fully the views of the council, and was not likely to underrate either 
their importance or their authority. Armed with the Tridentine 
canons, he set actively to work and instituted a very thorough system 
of inquisitorial visitations, which ought to have succeeded if success 
were possible. Yet, after the lapse of thirteen years, in a special 
mandate issued by him in 1578, he deplores the obstinate blindness 



the church of Holland, see Synod. 
Harlem, ann. 1564 ; Synod. Ultraject. 
ann. 1564; Concil. Ultraject. ann. 1565 
(Hartzheim VII. 5, 22, 137). It was 
to the publication of the council of 
Trent that William of Orange attributed 
the inevitable revolution which followed 
(Stradae de Bell. Belgic. Lib. iv.). 



1 Synod. Salisburg. ann. 1569 Const. 
xxvii. cap. xviii., xix., xx., xxi., xxii. 
(Hartzheim VII. 306-8). 

2 Concil. Salisburg. XLVII. (Dal- 
ham, Cone. Salisb. p. 583). 

3 Visitat. Salisburg. ann. 1616 Tit. 
I. cap. vi. (Hartzheim IX. 266). 



PERSISTENCE OF CLERICAL MARRIAGE. 



555 



of many of his clergy, who still believed, with the heretics, that 
marriage was not incompatible with priesthood, while those who did 
not marry were guilty of the less dangerous error of maintaining 
concubines and children on the revenues of their benefices. 1 

The same wilful ignorance apparently existed in the diocese of 
Wurzburg, for Bishop Julius, in 1584, found it necessary, in his 
episcopal statutes, to discountenance clerical matrimony and to prove 
its nullity by laboriously quoting innumerable canons and decretals ; 
and he even condescended to remind his priesthood that in taking 
orders they had willingly and knowingly entered into an engagement 
of continence, by the consequences of which they must be prepared 
to abide. 2 

A provincial synod of Gnesen, of which the date is uncertain, but 
which was probably held in 1577, deplored the insane audacity dis- 
played by ecclesiastics in marrying, and threatened them with the 
Tridentine anathema. 3 This warning appears to have been com- 
pletely disregarded, for the Bishop of Breslau, a suffragan of the 
metropolis of Gnesen, in opening his diocesan synod in 1580, still 
complained that many of his clergy were guilty of this perversity, 
and he was at some pains to disavow any complicity with it, or any 
connivance at the licentiousness which was prevalent among the un- 
married. 4 In 1591 the synod of Olmutz asserted that many clerks 
in holy orders contracted pretended marriages, and were not ashamed 
of the families growing up publicly around them, while others indulged 
in scandalous concubinage with women, whom they styled house- 
keepers or cooks. In endeavoring to put an end to this state of 
affairs, the synod manifested its estimation of the morals of the 
priesthood by renewing the hideous suggestions which we have seen 
in the tenth and twelfth centuries, for pastors were allowed to have 
near them the female relatives authorized by the Nicene canons, but, 



1 Decret. Keformat. Pragens. (Hartz- 
heim VII. 53). 

2 Statut. Kural. Julii "Wirceburg. P. 
III. c. iv. (Gropp Script. Ker. "Wirce- 
burg. I. 471-4). It is somewhat re- 
markable that Bishop Julius attributes 
the prohibition of marriage to the 
Council of ISTicsea. After describing 
the custom of the Greek church, he 
proceeds, " Permissio vero et consue- 
tudo ilia duravit usque ad Nicsenum 
concilium, in quo generali decreto 
abrogata est, statutumque ne aliquis 



habens uxorem consecretur sacerdos " 
— a falsification which is equally singu- 
lar, whether it proceeded from ignor- 
ance or fraud, and an admission that 
celibacy was not of apostolic origin 
which was rare in a Catholic prelate of 
that period. 

3 Synod. Gnesnens. c. xxxiii. (Hartz- 
heim VII. 891). 

4 Synod. Wratislav. ann. 1580 
(Hartzheim VII. 890). 



556 



THE POST-TEIDENTINE CHURCH, 



in view of the assaults of the tempter, were prudently advised not 
to let them reside in their houses. 1 The disregard of the Tridentine 
canon continued, and as late as 1628, at the synod of Osnabruck, 
the orator who opened the proceedings inveighed in the vilest terms 
against the female companions of the clergy, who not only occupied 
the position of wives, but were even dignified with the title. 2 

Even in Spain, under Philip II., the new ideas had penetrated, 
and priestly marriages became sufficiently numerous to render it 
necessary for the Inquisition to add to its " Edict of Denunciations," 
which was read during Lent in every church, a command to reveal 
to the authorities any case of marriage on the part of monks or of 
ecclesiastics in holy orders. 3 



We have seen above that the highest authorities in the church did 
not hesitate openly to attribute the origin and success of the Refor- 
mation to the scandalous corruption of the ecclesiastical body. The 
council of Trent had not resulted in removing the scandal, and clear- 
sighted prelates were not wanting who proclaimed that the same 
causes continued to operate and to produce the same effect. Anthony, 
Archbishop of Prague, in his synod of 1565, took occasion to declare 
that the misfortunes of the church were attributable to the dissolute- 
ness of the clergy, and that the extirpation of heresy could best be 
effected by reforming the depraved morals and filthy lives of ecclesi- 
astics. 4 At the council of Salzburg, in 1569, Christopher Spandel, 
in the closing address, asked the assembled prelates what title was 
more contemptible or more odious than that of priest in consequence 
of the license in which the clergy as a body indulged. 5 The clergy 
of France, assembled at Melun in July, 1579, when addressing Henry 
III. with a request for the publication of the council of Trent, assured 
him that the heresy which afflicted Christendom was caused by the 
corruption of the church, and that it could only be eradicated by a 



1 Synod. Olomucens. aim. 1591 c. 
xiii. (Hartzheim VIII. 352). 

2 Synod. Osnabrug. ann. 1628 (Hartz- 
heim IX. 431). — As usual, a distinction 
is drawn between those who thus 
formed permanent, though illicit con- 
nections, and others who indulged in 
promiscuous license — " alii vaga dis- 
soluti lascivia, tanquam equi emissarii, 
ad incontinentissimum quodque scortum 
aut adulteram adhinniunt trahuntque 
ingentes liberorum spuriorum greges. 



Hsec in propatulo sunt; quae vero in 
occulto fiunt ab ipsis, turpe est et 
dicere." 

3 Llorente, Histoire Critique de l'ln- 
quisition d'Espagne, Chap, xxviii. 
Art. iii. No. 7. 

4 Statut. Dioeces. Pragens. ann. 1565 
(Hartzheim VII. 26). 

5 Synod. Salisburg. ann. 1569 (Hartz- 
heim VII. 407). 



HERESY PROMOTED BY CLERICAL CORRUPTION. 557 



thorough reformation. 1 Though the Inquisition took care that Spain 
should not be much troubled by heretics, yet the synod of Orihuella, 
in 1600, declared that the concubinage practised by ecclesiastics was 
the principal source of popular animosity and complaint against them. 2 
These complaints were general. In 1599, Cuyck, Bishop of Bure- 
monde, published a work aimed at concubinary priests, in which he 
assured them that they and their predecessors were the cause of the 
ruin and devastation of the Netherlands for the last thirty years, for 
their vices had led to the contempt felt for the clergy, and thus to 
the heresy which had caused the civil wars. Those who kept their 
vows he asserts to be as rare as the grapes that can be gleaned after 
the vintage or the olives left after gathering the crop ; but the only 
remedy he can suggest is increased vigilance and severity on the part 
of the prelates. 3 Evidently, the Tridentine canons had thus far been 
a failure. In 1609, at the synod of Constance, the Rev. Dr. Ham- 
erer, in an official oration to the assembled prelates, deplored the 
continued spread of heresy, which he boldly told them was caused 
by the perpetually increasing immorality that pervaded all classes 
of the priesthood. The Reformation had begun, had derived its 
strength, and was still prospering through their weakness, which 
rendered them odious to the people, and made the Catholic religion 
a by-word and a shame. 4 In 1610, the Bishop of Antwerp, in a 
synodal address, agreed with Bishop Cuyck in attributing the evils 
which had so grievously afflicted the church of Flanders for nearly 
half a century, to the same cause, and, while recounting the various 
successive efforts at internal reform made since the council of Trent, 
he pronounced each one to have been a failure in consequence of the 
incurable obstinacy of the clergy. 5 Damhouder, a celebrated juris- 
consult of Flanders, whose unquestioned piety and orthodoxy gained 
for him the confidence of Charles V. and Philip II., does not hesi- 
tate to speak of the clergy of his time as men who rarely lived up 
to their professions, and who as a general rule were scoundrels dis- 
tinguished for their indulgence in all manner of evil. 6 In a similar 



i Le Plat, VII. 238. 

2 Synod. Oriolan. aim. 1600 cap. 
xxxviii. (Aguirre, VI. 457). 

3 Henr. Cuyckii Speculum Concu- 
binariorum Sacerdotum, Monachorum 
ac Clericorum ; Colonise, 1599. 

4 Synod. Constant, arm. 1609 (Hartz- 
heim VIII. 838). Another "orator, 



Dr. Mayer, S. J. , though more cautious 
in his deductions, was equally out- 
spoken in his denunciations of the 
wickedness of the clergy (Ibid. p. 831). 

5 Synod. Antverp. ann. 1610 (Hartz- 
heim VIII. 979). 

6 Damhouder. Kerum Crimin. Praxis 
cap. xxxvii. ISTo. 25 (Antverp. 1601). 



558 



THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH 



mood the Bishop of Bois-le-Duc, in opening his synod of 1612, de- 
clared that the scandalous lives of the ecclesiastics were a source of 
corruption to the laity and a direct encouragement of heresy. 1 So, 
in 1625, the synod of Osnabruck gave as its reason for endeavoring 
to enforce the Tridentine canons that the true religion was despised 
on account of the depraved morals of its ministers, whose crimes 
were a sufficient explanation of the stubbornness of the heretics. 
So little concealment of their frailty was thought necessary that they 
openly enriched their children from the patrimony of the church, 
and decked their concubines with ornaments and vestments taken 
from the holy images, even as we have seen was the custom among 
the Anglo-Saxons of the tenth century. 2 

The Thirty Years' War proved a more effectual bar to the spread 
of heresy than these fruitless efforts to cure the incurable malady of 
the church. After the Peace of Westphalia, there was no further 
need to appeal to the dread of proselyting Lutheranism as a stimulus 
to virtue, but still the same process of reasoning appears in exhorta- 
tions to regain the forfeited respect of the community. Thus, in 
1652, the Bishop of Munster expressed his horror at the obstinacy 
with which, in spite of fines, edicts, and canons, his clergy persisted 
in retaining their concubines, and he declared that the discordance 
between the professions and the practice of the priesthood rendered 
them a stench in the nostrils of the people and destroyed the au- 
thority of religion itself; 3 and in 1662 the synod of Cologne deplored 
that the notorious want of respect felt for the ministers of Christ was 
the direct result of their own immorality. 4 A doctrine even sprang 
up to the effect that it was not requisite to force a concubinarian to 
eject his companion if she was useful to him in his housekeeping or if 
it would be difficult for him to obtain another servant ; and this be- 
came sufficiently formidable to entitle it to a place among the errors 
of belief formally condemned by the Roman Inquisition in its decree 
of March, 1666. 5 



In France the influence of the Tridentine canons had been equally 
unsatisfactory. At a royal council held in 1560, which resolved 



1 Synod. Boscodunens. II. ann. 1612 
(Hartzheim IX. 200). 

2 Synod. Osnabrug. ann 1625 cap. 
v., x. Hartzheim IX. 350. — Synod. 
Osnabrug. ann. 1628 (Ibid. p. 428). 



3 Synod. Monasteriens. ann. 1652 
(Hartzheim IX. 786-7). 

4 Synod. Colon, ann. 1662 P. III. Tit. 
I. cap. 1 I iii. (Hartzheim IX. 1006). 

5 Mag. Bull. Koman. Ed. Luxemb. 
1742, T. VI. App. p. 2. 



FKANCE. 



559 



upon the assembly of the States at Orleans, Charles de Marillac, 
Bishop of Vienne, declared that ecclesiastical discipline was almost 
obsolete, and that no previous time had seen scandals so frequent or 
the life of the clergy so reprehensible. 1 From the proceedings ot 
the Huguenot Synod of Poitiers, in 1560, it is evident that priests 
not infrequently secretly married their concubines, and, when the 
woman was a Calvinist, her equivocal position became a matter of 
grave consideration with her church. 2 The only result of the Col- 
loquy of Poissy, in 1561, was that Catherine de Medicis prevailed 
upon the bishops to present a request to the king asking him to use 
his influence with the pope to concede the marriage of priests and 
the use of the cup by the laity. Means were found, as we have seen, 
to prevent the former of these demands from being made, while the 
latter, when presented, was peremptorily refused. 3 In the existing 
condition of affairs, the council of Trent could not reasonably be 
expected to effect much, for, as the orthodox Claude d'Espence 
informs us, the French prelates, like the Germans, were in the habit 
of collecting the "cullagium" from all their priests and informing 
those who did not keep concubines that they might do so if they 
liked, but must pay the license-money, whether or no. 4 In 1564, 
the Cardinal of Lorraine, not long after his return from the council, 
held a provincial synod at Rheims, where he contented himself with 
declaring that the ancient canons enjoining chastity should be en- 
forced. 5 The next year, 1565, a synod held at Cambray reduced the 
penalties to a minimum, and afforded every opportunity for purchasing 
immunity, by enacting that those who consorted with loose women, 
and who remained obdurate to warnings and reprehension, should be 
punished at the pleasure of the officials. 6 In two years more the 
same council was fain to ask the aid of the secular arm to remove 
the concubines of its clergy 7 — a course again suggested as late as 



1 Pierre de la Place, Estat. de Kelig. 
etc. Liv. iil 

2 Quick, Synod. Gall. Eeform. I. 18- 

3 Fleury, Hist. Eccles. Liv. GLVII- 

Nos. 37-42. 

4 Chavard, Le Celibat des Pretres. p. 
401. 

5 Concil. Kemens. arm. 1564, Stat. 
xvn. (Harduin. X. 477). 

6 Concil. Canierac. ann. 1565, Pvubr. 



viii. c. 3. — At this council, which was 
held in June, 1565, the council of 
Trent was formally adopted. As form- 
ing part of Flandre Frangaise, Cam- 
bray may properly be considered as 
French, though Francis I., by the 
treaty of Madrid in 1526, had been 
compelled to surrender his sovereignty, 
and till a hundred years later it con- 
tinued under Spanish dominion. 

7 Concil. Camerac. ann. 1567 c. iii. 
(Hartzheim VII. 216). 



560 



THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH, 



1631. 1 The terms in which Claude, Bishop of Evreux, at his synod 
of 1576, announced his intention of taking steps to eject those who 
for the future should persist in their immorality show not only that 
such measures were even yet an innovation, but also indicate little 
probability of their being successful. 2 The council of Rheims, in 
1583, while proclaiming that the Tridentine canons shall be enforced 
on all concubinary priests, manifests a reasonable doubt as to the 
amount of respect which they will receive in threatening that those 
who are contumacious shall be subdued by the secular arm. 3 The 
council of Tours, in the same year, deplores that the whole ecclesi- 
astical body is regarded with aversion by the good and pious on 
account of the scandals perpetrated by a portion of them. To cure 
this evil, the residence of suspected women, even when connected by 
blood, is forbidden, as well as of the children acknowledged to be 
sprung from such unions, and various penalties are denounced against 
offenders. 4 The council of Avignon, in 1594, declares that the nu- 
merous decrees relative to the morals and manners of the clergy are 
either forgotten or neglected, and then proceeds to forbid the resi- 
dence of suspected women. 5 That of Bordeaux, in 1624, earnestly 
warns the clergy of the province not to allow their sisters and nieces 
to live in their houses, and especially not to sleep in the same room 
with them ; 6 and various other synods held during the period repeated 
the well-known regulations on the subject, which are only of interest 
as showing how little they were respected. 7 

No one, in fact, who is familiar with the popular literature of 
France during that period can avoid the conviction that the ecclesi- 
astical body was hopelessly infected with the corruption which, ema- 
nating from the foulest court in Christendom, spread its contagion 
throughout the land. If Rabelais and Bonaventure des Periers 
reflect the depravity which was universal under Francis L, Bran- 



1 Synod. Camerac. aim. 1631 Tit. 
xviii. c. xiv. (Ibid. IX. 562). 

2 Claudii Episc. Ebroicens. Statut. 
cap. in. | 1 (Migne's Patrol. Tom. 147 
pp. 244-5.) 

3 Concil. Remens. ann. 1583 cap. 
xviii. I 5 (Harduin. X. 1293). 

4 Concil. Turon. ann. 1583 cap. xv. 
(Ibid. p. 1481). 

5 Concil. Avenionens. ann. 1594 can. 
xxxii. (Ibid. p. 1854). 



6 Concil. Burdigalens. ann. 1624 cap. 
xiii. I 2. (Harduin. XI. 96). 

7 Synod. Tornacens. ann. 1574 Tit. 
xii. c. 5, 6, 7 (Hartzheim VII. 780). 
— Synod. Audomarens. ann. 1583 Tit. 
xvi. c. 2 (Ibid. VII. 947). Concil. 
Burdigalens. ann. 1583 can. xxi. (Har- 
duin. X. 1360). — Concil. Bituricens. 
ann. 1584 Tit. xlii. can. 1-4 (Ibid. X. 
1503-4). — Concil. Aquens. ann. 1585 
cap. de Vit. et Honestate Cleric. (Ibid. 
X. 1547). — Concil. ISTarbonnens. ann. 
1609 cap. xli. (Ibid. XI. 96). 



EFFORTS AT REFORM. 



561 



tome, Beroalde de Verville and Noel du Fail continue the record of 
infamy under Catherine de Medicis and her children. 1 The gene- 
alogy of sin is carried on by Tallemant des Reaux, Bussy-Rabutin, 
and the crowd of memoir writers who nourished in the Augustan age 
of French literature. Into these common sewers of iniquity it is 
not worth our while to penetrate ; but, when the high places in the 
hierarchy were filled with men to whom the very name of virtue was 
a jest, we need not hesitate to conclude that the humbler members 
of the church were equally regardless of their obligations to God 
and man. 

It is evident from all this that the standard of ecclesiastical morals 
had not been raised by the efforts of the Tridentine fathers, and yet 
a study of the records of church discipline shows that with the 
increasing decency and refinement of society during the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries the open and cynical manifestations of 
license among the clergy became gradually rarer. It may well be 
doubted, nevertheless, whether their lives were in reality much purer. 
A few spasmodic efforts were made to enforce the Nicene canon, pro- 
hibiting the residence of women, but they were utterly fruitless, and 
were so recognized by all parties ; and the energies of the arch-priests 
and bishops were directed to regulating the character of the hand- 
maidens, who were admitted to be a necessary evil. The devices 
employed for this purpose were varied, and repeated with a frequency 
which shows their insufficiency ; and it would be scarce worth our 
while to do more than indicate some sources of reference for the 
curious student who may wish to follow up the reiteration which we 
have traced already through so many successive centuries. 2 Among 



1 Du Fail, whose high official posi- 
tion in the Parlement of Rennes pre- 
cludes the supposition of any tendency 
to Calvinism, devotes one of his dis- 
courses (Contes et Discours d'Eutrapel 
No. xx.) to the evils entailed by celi- 
bacy on the church and on society, 
quoting the exclamation of Cardinal 
Contarini to Yelly the French ambas- 
sador, "0 quee mala attulit in ecclesia 
coelibatus ille!" It is true that such 
stories as "Prater Fecisti " are not 
historical documents, yet they have 
their value as indicating the drift of 
public feeling and the convictions forced 
upon the minds of the people by the 
irregularities of the clerical profession. 
The same lesson is taught by Boccaccio, 



Piers Ploughman, Chaucer, Poggio, the 
Cent JSTouvelles Nouvelles, and all the 
other records of the interior life of the 
14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. 

2 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Tri- 
dent, vn. 136.— Collect. Synod. Mech- 
lin. Tom. T. pp. 39, 57.— Synod. Mech- 
lin, ann. 1570 Tit. xiv. (Ibid. I. 118). — 
Synod. Lovaniens. ann. 1574 (Ibid. I. 
191). — Synod. Provin. Mechlin, ann. 
1607 Tit. xviii. c. viii. (Ibid. I. 395).— 
Synod. Dioeces. Mechlin, ann. 1607 Tit. 
xvn. c. vi. (Ibid. II. 237). — Congregat. 
Archipresbyt. ann. 1613 (Ibid. II. 
271). — Tertia Congregat. Episc. ann. 
1624 (Ibid. I. 466).— Ibid. I. 514. 

Synod. Augustan, ann. 1567 P. III. 



562 



THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH. 



them, however, one new feature shows itself, which indicates the 
growing respect paid to the appearance of decency — complaints that 
concubines are kept under the guise of sisters and nieces. 

That the monastic orders had profited more than the secular clergy 
by the Tridentine reformation may well be doubted. Laurent de Pey- 
rinnis, one of the heads of the Order of Minims, in 1668, issued a 
code of regulations in which he showed that scandal was more 
dreaded than sin when he promulgated an exemption from excom- 
munication in favor of those brethren who, when about to yield to 
the temptations of the flesh, or to commit theft, prudently laid aside 
the monastic habit. 1 Another celebrated jurist of the same Order 
bears testimony to the demoralization of his brethren when he de- 
clares that if the severe punishments provided for unchastity by the 
statutes were enforced they would result in the destruction of all the 
religious congregations. 2 



In the New World the licentiousness of the priesthood, as might 
be expected, began to vex the infant church as soon as it was organ- 
ized among the heathen. The earliest synods and councils which 



c. ii. (Hartzheim VII. 182).— Synod. 
Constant, ann. 1567 P. n. Tit. i. c. 9 
(Ibid. VII. 541).— Synod. Ruremond. 
ann. 1570 (Ibid. VII. 653).— Synod. 
Boscodunens. ann. 1571 Tit. xiv. c. 
ii. (Ibid. VII. 723).— Synod. War- 
miens, ann. 1577 c. i. (Ibid. VII. 871). 
— Synod. Mettens. ann. 1604 c. xlviii., 
liii., lxii. (Ibid. X. 768-70).— Synod. 
Brixiens. ann. 1603 De discip. cler. 
c. xviii. (Ibid. VIII. 576).— Synod. 
Namurcens. ann. 1604 Tit. viii. c. vi. 
(Ibid. VIII. 623).— Synod. Constant, 
ann. 1609 P. n. Tit. xvii. c. 7 (Ibid. 
VIII. 906).— Synod. Mettens. ann. 
1610 Tit. xi. c. xi. (Ibid. VIII. 962).— 
Svnod. Antverp. ann. 1610 Tit. xvii. 
c." vi. (Ibid. VIII. 1003).— Statut. 
Visitat. Salisburgens. ann. 1616 Tit. 
i. c. vi. (Ibid. IX. 266).— Synod. 
Iprens. ann. 1629 c. xx. (Ibid. IX. 
496). — Synod. Namurcens. ann. 1639 
Tit. xix. c. ix., x. (Ibid. IX. 592-3).— 
Synod. Audomar. ann. 1640 Tit. xiv. 
c. vii. (Ibid. X. 802).— Synod. Colon. 
ann. 1651 P. n. c. ii. <J 1 (Ibid. IX. 
742). — Synod. Hildesheim. ann. 1652 
(Ibid. IX. 805-6).— Synod. Colon, 
ann. 1662 P. in. Tit. ii. c. 1, 2, 3 
(Ibid. IX. 1008-11).— Statut. Synod. 
Trevirens. ann. 1678 c. xi., xii., xiii., 



xiv. (Ibid. X. 60).— Statut. Synod. 
Argentinens. ann. 1687 De clericis 
addit. i. (Ibid. X. 180).— Synod. 
Brugens. ann. 1693 Tit v. \ 2 (Ibid. 
X. 202). — Cod. Canon. Mettens. ann. 
1699 Tit. x. c. xviii. (Ibid. X. 245).— 
Synod. Bisuntin. ann. 1707 Tit. n. c. 
xxv. (Ibid. X. 291).— Synod. Cul- 
mens. et Pomesan. ann. 1745 c. ix. 
(Ibid. X. 517). 

Concil. Toletan. ann. 1565 Act. n. 
cap. xxii. ; Act. in. cap. xix., xxv. 
(Aguirre V. 396, 405-6). — Concil. 
Valentin, ann. 1565 Tit. n. cap. xviii., 
xix. (lb. 425). — Concil. Toletan. ann. 
1582 Act. III. Decret. xxxv. (lb. VI. 
12). — Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1591 
Lib. i. Tit. viii.; Lib. in. Tit. ii. 
(lb. 256,271-3).— Synod. Oriolan. ann. 
1600 cap. xxxiii. (lb. 456). 

1 Katio est quia tunc non dimittit 
habitum ut periculose vagetur, sed ut 
commodius fornicetur, vel liberius 
furetur. — Apud C. Cbabot, Encyclo- 
pedic Monastique p. 24 (Paris, 1827). 

2 Spatharius, Aurea Methodus cor- 
rigendi regulares, 1625, p. 57 — " atque 
mea sententia, in totalem ordinis rui- 
nam et destructionem singularum relig- 
ionum " (Apud Cbabot. op. cit. p. 95). 



THE SPANISH COLONIES. 



563 



were held contain the customary denunciations of concubinage and 
prohibitions for ecclesiastics to keep their children in their houses, 
to celebrate their baptisms and nuptials, and to be assisted by them 
in the ministry of the altar. Many, as we are informed by the first 
council of Mexico, held in 1555, brought with them from Spain their 
concubines under the guise of relatives. 1 For the most part, how- 
ever, they formed connections with the natives. 

In fact, the institution of slavery and the subject populations 
among whom its ministers were scattered gave rise to fresh problems, 
which the church sought perseveringly, but vainly, to solve. Thus, 
in New Grenada, before the conquest was fairly achieved, Bishop 
Barrios, of Santafe, held his first synod, in 1556, and there, after 
premising that the fruits of religion among the Indians depended 
upon the good example of their pastors, he proceeded to prohibit any 
priest stationed in an Indian town from having any Indian woman 
residing in his house ; his food was to be cooked by men, or, if this 
was impossible, his female servant must be a married woman, residing 
with her husband under another roof 2 — a provision repeated by the 
synod of Lima in 1585. 3 A curious experiment in dealing with the 
troubles arising from slavery is seen in the Mexican canons, which 
directed that if an ecclesiastic had children by his slave, the owner- 
ship of the woman was to be transferred to the church and the chil- 
dren were to be set free. It will be remembered (p. 178) that in 
1022 the church insisted upon the continued servitude of clerical 
bastards whose mothers were serfs of the church; and the contrast 
between this and the regulation which proclaimed the freedom of the 
children as a punishment inflicted upon the father is perhaps the 
sorriest exhibit that could be made of the character of those who were 
engaged in spreading the teachings of Christ among the heathen. 4 

While there can be no doubt that much heroic self-devotion was 
shown in the efforts made to convert the new subjects of Spain, it is 
equally unquestionable that a majority of the ecclesiastics who sought 



1 Concil. Mexican. I. aim. 1555 cap. 
lvii. — The first and second Mexican 
Councils are not contained in Aguirre's 
collection, but were printed, together 
with the third, by Archbishop Loren- 
zana, in two folio volumes, Mexico, 
1769. The Third Council has also been 
reprinted in Mexico, in 1858, as a 
manual of existing local ecclesiastical 
law. 



2 Constituciones Sinodales de Santafe, 
1556 cap. iv. (Groot, Hist. Eccles. y 
Civil del Nuevo Keino de Granada, T. 
I. Append, ii. p. 497). 

3 Synod Dioac. Limens. III. ann. 
1585 cap. xi., lxvii. (Aguirre, YI. 193, 
198). 

* Concil. Mexican. I. ann. 1555 cap. 
Ii. — Concil. Mexican. III. ann. 1585 
Lib. v. Tit. x. I 8. 



564 



THE POST-TRIDENTISTE CHURCH. 



the colonies were men of the worst description. The councils held 
in the several provinces deplore the evil example which they set to 
their newly converted flocks, and the regulations which were issued 
time and again against their excesses show the impossibility of keep- 
ing them under control. In Peru, for instance, when in 1581 St. 
Toribio commenced the quarter of a century of labor as Archbishop 
which worthily won for him the canonization accorded by Benedict 
XIII. in 1726, two councils had already been held in Lima, one in 
1552 and the other in 1567, which had essayed a reformation of 
morals. He, in turn, lost no time in summoning a provincial 
council, which assembled in 1583, the decrees of which, in their 
denunciation of all manner of vices, show how ineffectual the previ- 
ous efforts had been. The clergy were not disposed to submit tamely 
to the new restraints which Toribio sought to impose, and, while the 
active resistance which some of them raised was subdued, the under- 
hand management of others was so far successful that the royal 
assent to the proceedings of the council was delayed till 1591. 1 
Notwithstanding the activity of Toribio, who, between 1583 and 
1604, held three provincial councils and ten diocesan synods, who 
three times personally visited every portion of his vast archbishopric, 
and who repeatedly ordered his vicars to send secret reports of con- 
cubinary and dissolute priests, he was obliged, in the provincial 
council of 1601, to content himself with renewing the regulations 
of 1583, sorrowfully observing that they had received scant obedi- 
ence, and that consequently the corruption and abuses prevalent 
among the clergy deprived them of usefulness among their Indian 
parishioners. 2 We can thus readily understand the grief with which 
the honest Fray Geronimo de Mendieta, a contemporary, after de- 
picting the eager docility with which the natives at first welcomed 
Christianity, contrasts it with the hatred which sprang up for the 
very name of Christian when they realized the hopeless wretched- 
ness of their position under their new taskmasters; and the Fray 
does not conceal the fact that this was partly owing to the character 
of some of the clergy, while the better ones were disheartened and 
discharged their trusts mechanically, without expectation of accomp- 



1 Aguirre, VI. 51, 55. — The canons 
of the council directed against concu- 
binage &c. are Act. in. c. 18, 19, 20, 
23, 24 (Ibid. pp. 40-41). 



2 Synod. Dioec. Limens. III. ann. 
1585 cap. xxxvi. — Synod. VIII. ann. 
1594 cap. xxxvi. — Concil. Provin. 
Limens. III. ann. 1601 Act. n. Decret. 
iv. (Aguirre, VI. 197-8, 436, 479). 



THE SPANISH COLONIES. 



565 



lishing good. 1 This condition of morals did not improve with time. 
In his official report of 1736, the Marques del Castel-Fuerte, Vice- 
roy of Peru, remarks that the greater portion of those of Spanish 
blood born in the colonies embraced an ecclesiastical life, as offering 
an easier and more assured career than any other. Surrounded by 
their Indian subjects, the pastors lived in luxury and license, which 
their superiors did little or nothing to check. In 1728 the civil 
power was ordered to make an investigation into the morals of the 
priesthood, and especially to designate those whose concubinage was 
open and notorious — an invasion of the sacred immunities of the 
church which provoked a storm against the secular authorities, 
although only an examination was proposed, and there was no 
attempt to be made of conviction or punishment. 2 

That the monastic establishments shared in the general dissolute- 
ness we may fairly conclude when we see the precautions which 
St. Toribio found necessary to preserve the purity of the spouses of 
Christ. Thus one regulation provides that no ecclesiastic shall visit 
a nun without a written permission, to be granted only by the Arch- 
bishop himself, or his Provisor ; and so little confidence did he feel 
in the guardians whom he himself appointed, that he directs that the 
official visitors who inspected the nunneries should not enter them 
without some special and urgent reason. 3 

A curious rule adopted by the first council of Mexico in 1555 
shows how much more scandal was dreaded than sin. In order, as 
it says, to avert danger and infamy from the clerical order and from 
married women, it prohibits the Fiscal, or prosecuting officer, from 
taking cognizance of cases of adultery committed by ecclesiastics, 
unless the husband be a consenting party, or the adulterer makes 
public boast of it, or the fact is so notorious that it cannot be passed 
over in silence ; and even when action thus is not to be avoided, 
in no case is the name of the woman to be mentioned in the pro- 
ceedings. The Provisors, however, are not forbidden to take notice 
of such crimes, but are allowed to settle them, if they can, with all 
due discretion. 4 As might be expected these regulations, by giving 
practical immunity, led to an increase in crime, and the third council 
of Mexico in 1585 tells us that many of the clergy indulged in it, 



1 Mendieta, Historia Eccles. Indiana, 
Lib. IV. cap. xlvi. (Mexico, 1870). 

2 Memorias de los Vireyes del Peru, 
Lima, 1859, T. III. pp. 63-70. 



3 Synod. Dioec. Limens. III. ann. 
1535 cap. xli. — V. ann. 1588 cap. ix. 
(Aguirre VI. 198, 216). 

4 Concil. Mexican. I. ann. 1555 cap. 
lxxxi. 



566 



THE POST-TEIDENTINE CHUECH. 



in preference to ordinary concubinage, in the confidence that they 
would not be prosecuted ; but the amended rule adopted by the Council 
to meet this trouble differs so little from its predecessors, that we may 
reasonably doubt whether it was followed by any diminution in the 
evil. 1 And this, judging from Rivera's notes to his edition of 1859, 
is the existing state of ecclesiastical law in Mexico, 2 although the 
Tridentine canon specially orders the Episcopal Ordinaries to pro- 
ceed ex officio in all such cases, even of laymen. 3 



The church of the post-Tridentine period began to find a darker 
and more dangerous sin attract closer attention than of old, and call 
for more serious efforts to prevent its offending the awakened con- 
sciousness of the faithful. The power of the confessional, one of the 
most effective instrumentalities invented by the ingenuity of man for 
enslaving the human mind, was peculiarly liable to abuse in sexual 
relations. No one can be familiar with the hideous suggestiveness 
of the penitentials without recognizing how fearfully frequent must 
be the temptations arising between confessor and penitent, while their 
respective relations render seduction comparatively easy, and un- 
speakably atrocious. 4 To deprive such relations of danger requires 
the confessor to be gifted with rare purity and holiness, and when 
these functions were confided to men such as those who composed the 
sacerdotal body, as we have seen it throughout the Middle Ages, the 
result was inevitable. 

The scandals of the confessional were no new source of tribulation 
to the church and the people. No sooner had the early custom of 
public and lay confession tended to fall into the hands of the priest- 
hood than it was found necessary to call attention to the dangers 
thence arising. The first council of Toledo, in 398, forbids any 
familiarity between the virgins dedicated to God and their con- 
fessors. 5 About the year 500, Symmachus calls attention to the 



1 Concil. Mexican. III. ann. 1585 
Lib. v. Tit. x. g 7. 

2 Notes 57 and 229, pp. 452, 549. 

3 Concil. Trident. Sess. XXIY. De 
Reform. Matrim. c. viii. — It requires 
some artful special pleading on the part 
of Rivera and of the authorities on 
whom he relies to reconcile this Mexican 
laxity with the instructions of the coun- 
cil of Trent. 

* For the brutal details of the ques- 



tions which the confessor was required 
to ask of his penitents, female as well 
as male, see Burchardi Decretorum Lib. 
xix. c, v. I dare not give even a spec- 
imen. 

5 Concil. I. Toletan. ann. 398 can. 
vi. For the custom of the early church 
in the matter of the confession of sins, 
see Socrates, H. E. v. xix., and Sozo- 
men, H. E. vn. xvi. — In the ninth 
century it was still an open question 
whether sacerdotal confession was nee- 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 



567 



spiritual affinity contracted between the confessor and his penitent, 
rendering the latter his daughter ; he alludes to Silvester as having 
denounced guilty relations between them, and proceeds to decree not 
only deposition in such cases, but life-long penitence. 1 As sacer- 
dotal confession gradually became customary, a decretal was forged — 
whether to give additional authority to the practice, or to impress 
upon the minds of confessors the necessity of prudence — by which 
the name of Celestin I. was used for a regulation confiscating all the 
possessions of the female delinquent and confining her in a monastery 
for life, while the seducer was warned that such sin with his spiritual 
daughter amounted to a grave case of adultery, for which he must be 
deposed and undergo penance for twelve years, provided, always, that 
the facts had become known to the people, 2 thus indicating that scandal 
rather than sin was the danger most dreaded. 

It was inevitable that this trouble should continue, as we have seen 
it do throughout the whole history of a celibate priesthood. 3 That it 
was the subject of frequent and indignant reprehension on the part 
of those who sought to elevate and purify the church we may well 
believe. Calixtus II. freely assumes the perdition of the priest who 
thus betrays the sacred confidence reposed in him, denouncing him 
as a lion devouring sheep, as a bear attacking a traveller who has 
lost his way, as a fowler spreading lures for birds and attracting 
them with sweet sounds, while the woman he treats not as a partner 
in guilt, but as an unfortunate who finds destruction where she is 
seeking salvation. 4 It is observable here that the fault is assumed 
to lie exclusively with the confessor, and such is likewise the case in 
the eloquent denunciations of Savonarola, who declares that the 
Italian cities are full of these wolves in sheep's clothing, who are 
constantly seeking to entice the innocent into sin by all the arts for 
which their spiritual directorship affords so much scope. 5 The extent 
to which the evil sometimes grew may be guessed from a case men- 
tioned by Erasmus, in which a theologian of Louvain refused absolu- 



essary, v. Concil. Cabillon. II. ann. 
813 c. xxxiii. (Cf. c. xxv. xxxii.). It 
was finally settled and auricular con- 
fession made obligatory by the Council 
of Lateran in 1215 (Concil. Lateranens. 
1Y. ann. 1215 c. xxi.). 

1 Gratian. Caus. xxx. q. i. can. 8 — 
I accept this decretal as genuine on 
Jane's authority, though its authen- 
ticity seems to me more than doubtful. 

* Gratian. Caus. xxx. q. i. can. 9, 10. 



3 See ante, passim, especially p. 350. 

* Calixti II. Serm. i. de S. Jacob. 
(Migne's Patrolog. T. 163 p. 1390).— 
The genuineness of these sermons has 
been doubted, but they are unquestion- 
ably, if not by Calixtus, by a writer 
nearly contemporary. 

5 Perrens, Jerome Savonarole, p. 71. 
See also Cornelius Agrippa, De Yani- 
tate Scientiar. c. lxiv. 



568 



THE P0ST-TK1DENTINE CHUKCH. 



tion to a pastor who confessed to having maintained illicit relations 
with no less than two hundred nuns confided to his spiritual charge. 1 

The view which was taken of this crime during the progress of the 
Reformation is set forth in a work on the Criminal Canon Law 
printed in Venice in 1543, which intimates that improper relations 
between a confessor and his penitents are not much worse than 
ordinary concubinage, but that when they become publicly known 
they should be severely punished by deprivation and imprisonment, 
seeing that their notoriety tends to prevent men from allowing their 
wives and daughters to confess, and exposes the sacrament of peni- 
tence to the assaults of the heretics. 2 It was probably this worldly 
wisdom which prevented the Council of Trent from alluding specifi- 
cally to the matter and endeavoring to put an end to a crime so 
heinous, for assuredly it had not grown less in the ever increasing 
license of the age. It is rather curious that in Spain, the only 
kingdom where heresy was not allowed to get a foothold, the trouble 
seems to have been greatest and to have first called for special 
remedial measures. Already, in 1556, Paul IV. had addressed a 
brief to the Inquisitors of Grenada, calling their attention to the 
frequency of the crime and assuming that confessors who could so 
abuse their office must hold unorthodox views as to the sacrament of 
penitence, which rendered them suspect of heresy and thus brought 
them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. He therefore in- 
structed the Inquisitors to prosecute such offenders zealously, but it 
was deemed best not to attract public attention to a matter so delicate, 
lest the faithful should be deterred from frequenting the confessional. 
The investigations were accordingly prosecuted in secret, and the 
criminals were privately punished. 3 

Enough was discovered to show that the trouble was general, and 
in 1564 Pius IV. issued a Bull addressed to the Inquisitor General, 
in which, assuming like his predecessor that the offence must be 
heretical, he authorized the Holy Office to prosecute it throughout 
the Spanish dominions, and revoked all immunities which the monastic 
orders might enjoy exempting them from local jurisdiction. 4 This 
brought the subject formally within the scope of the Inquisition which 



1 Limborch Hist. Inquisitionis p. 
34. 

2 Bernard. Diaz de Luco Pract. 
Crimin. Canon, cap. lxxv., lxxvi. 



(Ed. 1543, pp. 72-3). 



3 Llorente, Hist, de l'Inquisition 
d'Espagne, Ch. xxviii. Art. i. No. 4. 

4 Bull. Cum sicut nuper (Mag. Bull. 
Eom. II. 4. Ed. 1742). 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL 



569 



thenceforth took charge of it in those countries blessed with that 
institution. In some portions of Spain the Inquisitors added the 
crime of " solicitation " to the list of offences published in their annual 
"Edict of Denunciation," which required every one, under pain of 
excommunication, to denounce to the Holy Office all cases of which 
he might happen to be cognizant. Gonsalvo relates that in 1563 
this was done in Seville, when it brought such a crowd of accusing 
women to the Inquisition that twenty secretaries were unable to take 
down the depositions, within the allotted time of thirty days, and the 
limit had to be extended until it reached the term of four months, 
causing finally so great a popular ferment and implicating so large a 
number of ecclesiastics that the attempt had to be abandoned. 1 

Llorente considers this to be an exaggeration, as is probably the 
case, but he admits that the Conseyo de la Suprema was led to forbid 
the inclusion of the offence in the Edict of Denunciation, which 
greatly diminished the number of accusations, and this prohibition 
was repeated in 1571, in the hope that through the machinery of the 
episcopal courts the crime would be suppressed; but this expectation 
proving illusory, in 1576 the Conseyo ordered the crime to be rein- 
stated in the Edict. 2 

In 1608 Paul V. seems suddenly to have awakened to the necessity 
of extending to Portugal the means employed in Spain, and he issued 
to the Portuguese Inquisitor General a Bull similar in purport to those 
of his predecessors. Little was accomplished, even in these favored 
countries, and in 1622 Gregory XV. published a Bull extending to 
all Christendom the provisions of the previous ones, and granting to 
the episcopal courts full jurisdiction over all accused of "solicitation," 
notwithstanding whatever immunities they might otherwise enjoy; a 
single witness was pronounced sufficient, when supported by circum- 
stantial evidence, and the punishment of those convicted was left to 
the discretion of the judge, with the suggestion that it might extend 
to perpetual imprisonment or condemnation to the galleys for life, or 
even abandonment to the secular arm — that Inquisitorial euphuism 
for the faggot and the stake. 3 Apparently these Bulls received 



1 Beg. Gonsalvii Montan. Inquisit. 
Hispan. Exemplis Illustrata, pp. 184 
sqq. (Ed. Heidelbergse, 1567). 

2 Llorente, loc. cit. Nos. 6-8. 

3 Bull. Universi Dominici Gregis. 
(Mag. Bull. Kom. III. 484). 

In Spain, by the Carta Acordada of 



Aug. 3d, 1629, the Bull of Gregory 
XV. was to be referred to in the Edict 
of Denunciation ; and by the Carta of 
Sept. 12th, 1634, a clause was to be 
added to the Edict to the effect that 
notwithstanding the Bull, the offence 
was reserved exclusively to the Inquisi- 
iton. — Breve Besumen de las Cartas 



570 



THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH 



slender attention, for in 1633 a special decree directs that they shall 
be read at least once a year and an emphatic warning be given in a 
chapter of each order, and sworn evidence of the fact be transmitted 
to the congregation of the Inquisition at Rome. 1 Even this was but 
partially successful. Gregory's Bull was not published in either 
France or Germany, and for a century or more its observance through- 
out those regions depended entirely upon such bishops, of whom there 
were but few, who might see fit to promulgate its regulations in their 
individual dioceses ; 2 although the established rule of the church pro- 
tected the criminal by not permitting a woman who had been seduced 
in the confessional to name her seducer to another confessor. 3 

Even in the kingdoms where the Bull was legally received and 
published, its provisions in practice seem to have been held as directed 
almost exclusively against those who might be foolish enough to incur 
suspicion of heresy by asserting that they were not aware of their 
guilt. While the Holy Office stretched its power to convict and 
punish all the wretched heretics whom it could bring within its grasp, 
it was singularly tender of those whom successive popes denounced 
as the worst of offenders. In a learned work on the subject, the 
author, an official of the Portuguese Inquisition, urges the caution 
requisite in proceedings which affect the honor of ecclesiastics, bring- 
ing scandal and grief to the faithful and glory and joy to the heretic. 
As the accused had all presumptions in his favor, since he had been 



Acordadas antiquas y modernas, dis- 
puesto por Abecedario, s. v. Solicitante 
(MS. Bib. Reg. Hafniens. No. 2186, p. 
264). That the Court of Rome kept 
faith in the matter of solicitation would 
seem to be proved by a case occurring 
in 1695 when Dr. Augustin Velda, 
rector of La Sallana in Valencia was 
accused before the Inquisition, and fled 
to Rome, where he presented himself 
to the Sacred Congregation and was 
ordered to return. This he did, but 
with what result is not noted (Ibid. p. 
339). [This exceedingly interesting 
MS. is a manual for use in one of the 
tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition, 
compiled about the year 1670, with notes 
bringing it down to the middle of the 
18th century. I take this occasion of 
expressing my obligations to the gentle- 
men in charge of the Royal Library of 
Copenhagen, of the Bodleian Library 
of Oxford, and of the Royal Library 



of Munich, for their courtesy in com- 
municating to me a number of MSS.] 

1 Referred to in a Decree of 1745 
(Bullar. Benedicti XIY. T. I. p. 291). 

2 Pontas, Diet, de Cas de Conscience, 
Paris, 1741, T. I. p. 862.— Amort, 
Diet. Selectt. Casuum Conscientioe, 
Aug. Vind. 1733, T. I. pp. 704-5. 
From the latter we learn that a few 
years previously the Franciscans of 
Bavaria had agreed to receive the Bull 
in so far as to prohibit any of their 
confessors from absolving a penitent 
who had been solicited by those of their 
own order, unless she would permit 
him to denounce the culprit to the 
Superior — an example which the writer 
wishes were followed elsewhere, as it 
would be very usful in repressing many 
scandals which afflicted the German 
church. 

3 Rodriguez, Nueva Somma de 'Casi 
de Coscienza, P. I, cap. liii. No. 10. 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 



571 



selected for the sacred functions of the confessional, and as women 
were by nature inconstant, corruptible, deceitful, mendacious, and 
given to perjury, he concludes that the evidence of a single witness 
is wholly inconclusive; two witnesses of good character may justify 
the seclusion of the accused, either in prison or in his own convent 
or house, but four were necessary to his conviction; he decides 
adversely the question whether deficiency of evidence can be supple- 
mented by torture; and he cites Potiphar's wife to caution his 
brethren against lending too hasty credence to accusations which 
may be only the revengeful promptings of a baffled tempter. 1 Casuists 
were found to argue that the solicitation must occur during the act 
of confession itself to bring the accused within the words of the 
papal decrees, which were not applicable even if it took place in the 
confessional immediately before the woman commenced to confess, or 
immediately after she had received absolution. 2 The accused who 
denied, might be shown the torture, but could not be exposed to it, 
and if punished, his punishment must be secret, so as not to give rise 
to popular disquiet. 3 In Spain, when the local tribunal had agreed 
upon a sentence, it could not be executed without referring the case 
and all the evidence to the Conseyo de la Suprema; 4 but the sentence 
which was thus so carefully to be considered, was not usually 
severe. Some instructions on the subject issued in 1577, after 
premising that there must be neither public penitence nor appear- 
ance in an auto de fe, and that the sentence, unlike that of heretics, 
must be made known only to the ecclesiastics of the place, proceed 
to state that the penalties to be imposed on the guilty are at the 
discretion of the Tribunal, except that he is obliged to abjure the im- 
plied heresy and is prohibited from hearing confessions in the future. 
Whether he is to be suspended from administering the other sacra- 
ments, or from preaching, and whether he is to be imprisoned or 
banished from the place of his crime, must depend upon the gravity 
of the offence. In grave cases, secular priests may be punished by 
seclusion, or deprivation of function or benefice, or pecuniary fines, 
with discipline, secret prayers and fasting ; and monks may be visited 
with the discipline, removal from the scene of their misdeeds, sus- 



1 Kod. a Cunha pro SS. D. N. PP. 
Pauli Y. Statuto nuper emisso in Con- 
fessarios Feminas solicitantes Quaest. 
xxii. No. 3; xxiii. No. 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 
12, 14 (4to. Benavente 1611). 

8 Ant. de Sousa Opusc. circa Constit. 



Pauli PP. V. in Confessarios allicientes 
etc. 4to.Ulyssip. 1623, Tract. I. cap. xviii. 

3 Ibid. Tract, n. cap. xviii. No. 9-12. 

* MS. Bib. Keg. Hafniens. No. 218&, 
p. 264. 



572 



THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH. 



pension or privation of orders, of the privilege of voting in their 
convents, and relegation to the last place in the choir and refectory. 1 
All this manifests not only a provident care to prevent scandal among 
the faithful, but a singular tolerance of crime when compared with 
the severity which characterized the ordinary operations of the Inqui- 
sition, in lapses of faith however slight. A man who asserted that 
simple fornication was not a mortal sin was treated as a heretic and 
"relaxed" or "reconciled," with all the tremendous consequent 
penalties upon him and his posterity ; and it is significant in many 
ways to observe that a culprit guilty of prostituting the confessional 
to seduce his spiritual daughters was to be punished by being made 
to take the lowest seat in the choir. This misplaced lenity was more 
than carried out in practice. According to Llorente, the records of 
the Inquisition show that not ten per cent, of those accused were 
convicted; and even when convicted it was not unusual for the con- 
vict, through influences brought to bear on the Inquisitors General, 
to obtain a removal of the interdiction of hearing confessions. 2 In 
one case of special atrocity which occurred under the eyes of Llorente 
himself, the culprit, in addition to the discipline, deprivation of vote, 
and degradation to the lowest seat in the choir (he had been Pro- 
vincial of the Capuchins of New Grenada), was condemned to five 
years' imprisonment in a convent of his own order — a most inade- 
quate penalty for a man who had seduced thirteen nuns in a convent 
under his spiritual guardianship. 3 In the horrible affair of Corella, 
which occurred in 1743, it is true that the Abbess, Dona Agueda de 
Luna, died under the torture; and her principal accomplice, Fray 
Juan de la Vega, after being tortured in his examination, was 
declared suspect in the highest degree and was confined in the desert 
convent of Duruelo till his death, but in this case the accused were 
Molinists, or Illuminati, which of itself rendered them worthy of the 
stake, and in addition, besides numerous infanticides, they had 
entered into a pact with Satan. 4 

The nunneries, indeed, appear to have suffered especially from this 
cause, particularly when their spiritual directors were monks. This 
was a complaint of old standing, and the authors of the "Consilium 
de Emendanda Ecclesia," in 1538, proposed to put an end to the 



1 Ibid. pp. 264-5. 

2 Llorente, Chap, xxviii. Art. i. Nos" 
20, 23. 



3 Ibid. Art. ii. 

4 Ibid. Ch. xl. Art. ii. Nos. 2-14. 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 



573 



scandals thence arising by prohibiting members of the conventual 
orders from serving in that capacity, which was to be confided in the 
future to the Episcopal Ordinaries. 1 A more partial cure was that 
suggested in 1627 by Urban VIII. when he granted a special Bull 
to Christobal de Lobera, Bishop of Cordova, depriving the mendicant 
orders of their right to papal jurisdiction, and subjecting them to the 
Ordinary of the diocese in order to put a stop, if possible, to crimes 
committed by them in the confessional. 2 These monastic troubles 
were by no means confined to Spain. When, as we shall see here- 
after, the Grand Duke, Leopold of Tuscany, undertook in 1774 to 
reform the nunneries of his dominions, they had for a century and a 
half been the scene of the worst disorders, committed by the regular 
clergy who were their spiritual directors, and Leopold found his 
principal opposition in the court of Rome itself. 3 In Provence, the 
canons of Pignan made no secret of their domination over the bodies 
as well as over the souls of the nuns of the district, so that in a single 
year there were sixteen declarations of pregnancy officially made by 
the latter, who seemed to consider it as one of the duties of their pro- 
fession. As Michelet remarks, this at least diminished the monastic 
crime of infanticide, for the children were openly put out to nurse 
and were generally adopted by their foster-mothers. 4 

Some statistics, given by Llorente from the archives of the Inqui- 
sition, afford a curious commentary upon the influence of monasticism. 
Comparing the number of accusations brought for this offence with 
the total census of the secular and regular clergy, he found that one 
out of every ten thousand secular priests was charged with it, while 
among the monastic orders the proportion was much greater. The 
Benedictines, Bernardines, Jeronymites, Premonstratensians, Basil- 
ians, Agonizantes, Theatins, and Oratorians, and the canons regular 
of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara, Montesa, St. Juan, and of the 
Holy Sepulchre showed a proportion of one in every thousand. 
Among the Carmelites, Augustinians, Mathurins, the Order of La 
Merced, the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Minims of St. Francis 
de Paul, there was one in every five hundred : one in four hundred 



1 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Tri- 
dent. II. 602. — Caraffa and his coad- 
jutors, indeed, went so far as to suggest 
the entire suppression of the conventual 
orders (Ibid. 601). 

2 A printed copy of this Bull occurs 
in some voluminous pleadings between 



the church of Cordova and the Inquisi- 
tion, in 1643.— MS. Bibl. Bodl. Arch. 
S. 130. 

3 De Potter, Yie de Scipion de'Kicci, 
T. I. pp. 87 sqq. 258 sqq. 

4 Michelet, La Sorciere, Ch. ix. 



574 



THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH 



among the barefooted orders of the Augustinians, Mathurins, and 
Fathers of La Merced; and one in two hundred among the bare- 
footed Carmelites, the Alcantarians and the Capuchins. 1 These 
results Llorente explains partly by the greater attention paid by 
some orders to the duties of the confessional, but chiefly by the dif- 
ferences in their rules of discipline. Those who, like the secular 
priests, had comparative wealth and freedom were able to gratify 
their passions without resorting to indulgence so dangerous, while 
those whose vows bound them to poverty and asceticism were most 
liable to be tempted by the opportunities of the confessional. It 
was precisely the orders that were most rigid which produced the 
greatest number of culprits. Another significant fact was that the 
greater portion of these accusations were brought by nuns, and from 
this Llorente seeks to explain the small proportion of cases in which 
the accused was found guilty. The inquiries necessary to confession 
often appeared to the simple-minded devotee a direct enticement to 
sin, and her excited imagination, in dwelling upon them, would lead 
her to imagine herself the object of her confessor's impure desires — a 
defence of the system almost as damaging as the facts which it 
attempts to extenuate. 2 

Whatever may be Llorente's opinion as to the comparative inno- 
cence of the secular priesthood, it does not appear to have been shared 
by the church. The local ecclesiastical legislation of the seventeenth 
century is surcharged with innumerable minute directions as to the 
age of the confessor and the form and structure of confessionals; re- 
stricting female penitents, unless dangerously ill, from being heard 
except in church and by daylight, and prescribing the relative posi- 
tions to be maintained by confessor and penitent. 3 In the earlier, 
though scarce purer, period of the fifteenth century John Myrc con- 
tents himself with simpler rules — 

But when a wommon cometh to the 
Loke hyre face that thou ne se, 



1 Llorente, Chap, xxviii. Art. i. No. 
14. 

2 The dangerous suggestiveness of 
the questions asked in the confessional 
was recognized, and confessors were 
somtimes warned to be careful. — Synod. 
Diceces. Mechlin, n. ann. 1609 Tit. v. 
cap. i. 

3 See, for instance, Concil. Toletan. 
ann. 1582, Decret. xxviii., xxix. 



(Aguirre, VI. 11). — Synod. Oriolan. 
ann. 1600 cap. xix. (lb. p. 450).— 
Synod. Beneventan. ann. 1693 Tit. liv. 
c. iii. (Collect. Lacens. I. 94). — Synod. 
Neapol. ann. 1699 Tit. xi. c. i. No. 11 
(lb. p. 232). Also a curious list of 
twenty abuses of the confessional in a 
letter from the Bishop of Antwerp to 
the Archbishop of Mechlin in 1624 
(Synodicon Mechliniense, T. I. p. 474). 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL, 



575 



But teche hyre to knele downe the by, 

And sum what thy face from hyre thou wry, 

Stille as ston ther thou sitte, 

And kepe the welle that thou ne spytte. 

Koghe thow not thenne thy thonkes, 

Ne wrynge thou not wyth thy schonkes — l 



and the attention which was now given to the minutest details of 
these matters shows how much men's minds were excited by the sub- 
ject, and how, as usual, the church sought palliatives for the evil to 
which she dared not apply a radical cure. 

A natural result of the effort made to suppress the evil was a refine- 
ment of ingenuity on the part of the evil-doers to escape the result 
of their transgressions, and the subtlety of casuists was taxed to the 
utmost in defining with precision all the acts and motives which would 
render offenders liable to the penalties decreed in the Papal Bulls, 
thus giving rise to quite a literature specially devoted to the sub- 
ject. 2 In 1614, the Roman Inquisition, under Paul V., was obliged 
formally to declare that priests who used the confessional as a place 
of assignation were liable to the decrees, even though not engaged at 
the moment in administering the sacrament of penitence; 3 and in 
1665 Alexander VII. felt it necessary to condemn the proposition 
that a confessor, while hearing a confession, could give his penitent a 
love-letter without incurring the guilt of solicitation. 4 The mode, 
however, which offered the surest escape was for the confessor to 
absolve his partner in sin, and thus release her from all obligation to 
denounce him, 5 for such an absolution was good, according to St. 
Thomas Aquinas. 6 This gave the church infinite trouble. It satis- 
fied the conscience of the woman, for the council of Trent had taken 
care to declare that priests in mortal sin did not lose the power of 
absolution conferred on them by the Holy Ghost in their ordination, 7 



1 Instructions for a Parish Priest, p. 
27 (Early Eng. Text Soc. 1868). 

2 As specimens of this, I may refer 
to Cardinal Cozza's " Dubia Selecta 
emergentia circa Sollicitationem in 
Confessione Sacramentali juxta Apos- 
tolicas Constitutiones " Lovanii, 1750 
— and the similar works by a Cunha 
and de Sousa, quoted above. 

3 Cozza, op. cit. Dub. xvn. No. 112. 

* Mag. Bull. Koman. Tom. VI. 
App. p. 1. 



5 Occasional references to this prac- 
tice may be found in earlier times. See, 
for instance, Concil. Monasteriens. ann. 
1279 c. xv. (Hartzheim III. 649)— 
Suppression of Monasteries, No. xvil. 
(Camden Soc). — Synod. Tornacens. 
ann. 1520 c. vii. (Hartzheim VI. 156). 

6 V. Pontas, Diet, de Cas de Con- 



7 Cone. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pceni- 
tent. c. vi. 



576 



THE POST-TKIDENTINE CHURCH. 



while so vile a prostitution of the sacrament could not but bring the 
whole system into contempt. Yet casuists were found to distinguish 
between the guilt of him who soothes the conscience of the woman 
whom he had seduced by absolving her after the act, in which case 
he is not exposed to the penalties of solicitation, 1 and of him who 
promises absolution in advance as a temptation to sin, which brings 
him within the scope of the decrees. 2 

The condemnation issued in 1665 by Alexander VII. of the pro- 
position that absolution under such circumstances relieves the woman 
from the obligation of denunciation 3 shows the extent of the evil and 
the boldness of the perpetrators, but did nothing to cure it. A more 
effective step had been taken in 1661 by the provincial synod of 
Cambray, which was the revival of the ancient rule that no confessor 
should have power in such cases to grant absolution to his paramour 
except in articulo mortis ; a precedent which was followed in 1663 
by the congregation of arch-priests of the province of Mechlin. 4 
This action seems to have aroused considerable opposition and no 
little discussion, for, at a convocation of bishops, held at Brussels in 
January, 1665, it was the first subject submitted for debate. 5 The 
question, however, remained unsettled, for, although the power to 
grant such absolution was specially excepted in all commissions issued 
to confessors in the province, the evil continued, and again came up 
for discussion at the synod of Namur, in 1698, when the practice was 
peremptorily forbidden for the future. 6 In the province of Besangon 
a canon of 1689 declares that although the abuse had been long pro- 
hibited, yet that it continued to flourish; and a formal enunciation 
was considered necessary, taking away the power of conferring abso- 
lution in such cases — a regulation which had to be repeated in 1707. 7 
In 1709 the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, issued an 
order prohibiting it in his diocese, but as late as 1741 Pontas informs 
us that such absolutions were valid in all places where they had not 
been forbidden by episcopal authority. 8 This extraordinary confes- 



1 Del Bene de Offic. S. Inquisit. P. 
II. Dub. ccxxxyii. I ix. No. 6. 

2 Cozza, op. cit. Dub. xxxin. 

3 Mag. Bull. Roman. Tom. VI. App. 
p. 1. 

4 Synod. Camerac. ann. 1661 c. xi. 
(Hartzheim IX. 888). — Synodicon 
Mechliniense II. 319. 



5 Ibid. I. 559. 

6 Synod. Namurcens. ann. 1698 c. 
xxviii. (Hartzheim X. 219). 

7 Synod. Bisuntin. ann. 1707 Tit. 
xiy. c. xiv. (Ibid. 323). 

8 Pontas, Diet, de Cas de Conscience' 
Paris, 1741, T. I. p. 837.— Prom the 
German edition of Amort (Diet, selectt. 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 577 

sion on such a subject was most discreditable to the church, and in 
1741 Benedict XIV. signalized the commencement of his pontificate 
by converting these local regulations into a general law by his Bull, 
"Sacramentum Pcenitentige," in which he not only endeavored to 
sweep away all the refinements by which casuists had so nearly nulli- 
fied the decrees of his predecessors, but he devoted a special clause to 
the device by which the sacrilegious ministers of Satan rather than of 
God absolved their partners in guilt. This he absolutely prohibited 
for the future, except in articulo mortis when no other priest could 
be had; he took away the power of administering the sacrament of 
penitence in such cases, pronounced absolution null and void when 
thus given, and punished the attempt to give it by ipso facto ex- 
communication removable by the papal court alone. 1 Four years 
later, he relaxed somewhat the rigor of these regulations in a manner 
which shows how everpresent was the fear of attracting attention to 
the frailties of ecclesiastics, for he permitted absolution in articulo 
mortis in all cases where another confessor could not be called in 
without attracting attention and causing suspicion and scandal, which 
was virtually to remove the prohibition. 2 In the same year he also 
renewed the decree of 1633 requiring the Papal Bulls on the subject 
to be read at least once a year in the chapters of all the monastic 
orders, 3 who seem to have been the principal offenders in these 
matters; doubtless for the reason which Llorente says was usually 
alleged as an excuse by culprits — because they had no other 
opportunity of sinning. 4 

Energetic as was the legislation of Benedict, it by no means put 
an end to the trouble. The year after his Bull appeared, in 1742, 
the synod of Namur found it necessary to remind confessors that 
they could not absolve women whom they had seduced; 5 and in 1768 
the Bishop of Ypres was obliged to recall to the attention of his 
clergy the Bulls of Gregory and of Benedict, and to threaten their 
transgressors with excommunication. 6 The abuse was by no means 



Casuum Conscientise, Aug. Vind. 1733) 
we learn that the state of the canon 
law on this subject was the same in 
Germany as in France. 

1 Bull. Sacrament. Poenitent. $ 4 
(Builar. Benedicti XIV. T. I. p. 23). 
— In 1742 he extended the provisions 
of this constitution over the Greek 
churches subject to Borne. — Bull. Etsi 
pastoralis $ ix. ISTo. v. (Concil. Collect. 
Lacens. II. 518). 



2 Benedict. XIV. Const. CXX. g 3 
(Bullar. I. 219). 

3 Ibid. p. 291. 

4 Llorente, Chap, xviii. Art. i. No. 
13. 

5 Synod. Namurcens. ann. 1742 c. iv. 
(Hartzheim X. 487). 

6 Instruct. Pastoral, ann. 1768 c. 
xcvii. (Ibid. 



37 



578 



THE POST-TRIDENTItfE CHURCH. 



confined to Europe, but extended to the missionary stations of the 
church. In 1775 the Apostolic Vicar of Cochin China inquired of 
Pius VI. whether the Bull of Benedict XIV. applied to the Fran- 
ciscan missionaries under his charge, and, if so, whether it could not 
be moderated, to which Pius replied affirmatively as to the first ques- 
tion and negatively as to the second. That the scandal continued 
is shown by a pastoral letter of the Apostolic Vicar of Suchuen in 
1803. * It is not surprising that St. Francois de Sales should have 
declared that a confessor was to be selected out of ten thousand, 
seeing that so few among them were fitted for the function. 2 



In considering the slow progress of improvement in the char- 
acter of the clergy, we must bear in mind not only the debased ma- 
terial which required to be reformed, and the prevailing low stan- 
dard of sexual morality throughout Europe, but also the prevalence 
within the church of the casuistic spirit, which tended to obliterate 
the distinctions between right and wrong and to extenuate all offences 
against the Decalogue. This spirit received a powerful impulse from 
the rising influence of the Company of Jesus, which furnished the 
most distinguished casuists and fostered the habit of testing every- 
thing by an artificial standard. If scandal could be averted, if the 
immediate temporal interests of the Order or of the church could be 
subserved, it mattered little whether morality suffered ; and the subtle 
dialectics of the schools could always invent a justification for any 
line of action which appeared expedient at the moment. We have 
already seen how the successive Bulls of reforming pontiffs directed 
against the abuses of the confessional were virtually nullified in this 
manner; and the same processes were employed to soften the harsh- 
ness of the canons which sought to repress the other vices of the 
clergy. 3 To one who examines the works of these skilful dialec- 
ticians, the only wonder is that a church which not only tolerated 
but exalted them could retain any respect for virtue or any reverence 
for law, human or divine. 

When these resources failed, recourse could be had to other means 



1 Instruct. S. Inquisit. Roman, ann. 
1867 (Collect. Lacens. III. 554).— Litt. 
Past. Episc. Caradrens. xxvu. 2, 3 
(Ibid. VI. 646-7). 

2 Ap. Helsen, Abus du Celibat des 
Pretres, p. 87. 



3 See, for instance, the manner in 
which Escobar (Theolog. Moralis 
Tract, i. Ex. viii. cap. 3 No. 80) and 
Avila (De Censuris Eccles. P. VII. 
Disp. iv. Dub. vii. in fin.) explain 
away the Bull of Pius V. contra cleri- 
cos sodomitas. 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 579 

to avert scandal, as in the case of Father Mena, a priest of the Com- 
pany of Jesus, at Salamanca, who persuaded one of his female peni- 
tents that God required her to abandon herself to him. He kept 
her in a hermitage conveniently near to the College of Jesuits where 
he officiated, and several children were the result of the union, when 
the matter became so notorious that the Inquisition interfered and 
threw the culprit into its prison at Valladolid. The Company of 
Jesus undertook his defence, and on the strength of certificates of 
his illness obtained his transfer to their college, where he was to be 
watched by officials of the Inquisition. His apparent illness in- 
creased, until a report was spread of his death; an image with a 
mask resembling him was interred with all the ceremonies of religion, 
and he was secretly conveyed to Genoa, where he was intrusted with 
a mission to convert the Jews. 1 

More strenuous exertion, however, was required in the struggle 
over the case of Father Girard and la Cadiere, which, in 1730 and 
1731, convulsed society in Provence. Girard was a Jesuit of high 
reputation, who came to Toulon in 1728, where he soon obtained the 
spiritual direction of a number of women, among whom he selected 
seven to minister to his lusts. One of them, Catharine Cadiere, a 
girl of 19, was especially distinguished for her exaltation of religious 
sensibility, which rendered her eminently fitted for the dangerous 
extravagances of Quietism. Under his guidance she speedily had 
ecstatic visions of heaven and hell, and was marked as the favorite 
of Divine Love by the stigmata which appeared on hands, feet, fore- 
head, and side. While enjoying the popular veneration as a saint, 
it was not difficult for her spiritual guide to persuade her that God 
required her submission to him. This continued for some months, 
until, convinced that Girard had led her into sin, in place of the 
state of perfection to which she aspired, she changed her confessor, 
when the matter leaked out, and she brought a formal accusation 
against her seducer. At once the Company of Jesus took up the 
quarrel, and, as it suited the policy of Cardinal Fleury, the all- 
powerful minister, to gratify them, the unfortunate girl had no 
chance. The Episcopal courts, in which the case was first brought, 
sided with the guilty, and even the secular tribunals, to which the 
matter was transferred, were bitterly hostile to her. The accuser 
became the accused. She was persecuted, imprisoned, and threat- 



1 Factum pour Marie Catherine Cadiere, La Haye, 1731, pp. 142-44. 



580 



THE POST-TRIDENTINE CHURCH 



ened with torture, and in the Parlement of Aix, before which the 
case was finally brought, two members actually proposed that she 
should be burnt alive, but agreed, in order to secure the support of 
others, to accept the milder sentence of strangling after due infliction 
of torture, and this verdict was brought before the Parlement for 
debate. Despite the social influence of the Jesuits, this atrocity 
aroused public opinion throughout Provence and excited tumults 
which frightened the friends of Girard, so that when the final vote 
was taken only half the members of the Parlement pronounced him 
innocent, the other half voting for his condemnation, and he was 
saved by the casting vote of the President, Lebret. So strong was 
the popular feeling against him that he had to be conveyed away 
secretly to escape the vengeance of the mob, and died two years 
afterwards in the odor of sanctity, fully upheld by the Company of 
Jesus. As for la Cadiere, she disappeared from sight, and the fate 
of the unfortunate girl is unknown. 1 



1 Michelet, La Sorciere, Chap. x. , xi. , 
xti. — After reading the pleadings on 
both sides (published at the Hague in 
1731), I can entertain no doubt as to 



the guilt of Girard. The case at the 
time attracted general attention through- 
out Europe. 



XXX. 



THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION. 



If the council of Trent had thus failed utterly in its efforts to 
create that which had never existed — purity of morals under the rule 
of celibacy — it had at length succeeded in its more important task of 
putting an end to the aspirations of the clergy for marriage. With 
the anathema for heresy confronting them, few could be found so bold 
as openly to dispute the propriety of a law which had been incorpo- 
rated into the articles of faith ; and the ingenious sophistries and far- 
fetched logic of Bellarmine were reverently received and accepted as 
incontrovertible. Urbain Grandier might endeavor to quiet the con- 
science of his morganatic spouse by writing a treatise to prove the 
lawfulness of priestly wedlock, but he took care to keep the manu- 
script carefully locked in his desk. 1 A man of bold and independent 
spirit, fortified by unfathomable learning, like Louis Ellies Du Pin, 
might secretly favor marriage, and perhaps might contract matri- 



1 When Grandier was arrested and 
tried for sorcery, his papers were seized, 
and among them was found an essay 
against sacerdotal celibacy. Under 
torture, he confessed that he had written 
it for the purpose of satisfying the con- 
science of a woman with whom he had 
maintained marital relations for seven 
years (Hist, des Diables de Loudun, 
pp. 85, 191). The manuscript was 
burnt, with its unlucky author, but a 
copy was preserved, which has recently 
been printed (Petite Bibliotheque des 
Curieux, Paris, 1866). In it, Grandier 
shows himself singularly bold for a 
man of his time and station. The law 
of nature, or moral law, he holds to be 
the direct exposition of the Divine will. 
By it revealed law must necessarily be 
interpreted, and to its standard ecclesi- 



astical law must be made to conform. 
He evidently was made to be burned as 
a heretic, if he had escaped as a sor- 
cerer. The promise of chastity exacted 
at ordination he regards as extorted, and 
therefore as not binding on those unable 
to keep it ; while he does not hesitate 
to assume that the rule itself was 
adopted and enforced on purely tem- 
poral grounds — "de crainte qu'en re- 
muant une pierre on n'esbranlat la 
puissance papale ; car hors cette con- 
sideration d'Estat, l'Eglise romaine 
pense assez que le celibat n'est pas 
d 'institution divine ni necessaire au 
salut, puisqu'elle en dispense les par- 
ticuliers, ce qu'elle ne pourroit faire si 
le celibat avoit este ordonne d'enhaut" 
(pp. 34-5). 



582 



THE CHUECH AND THE REVOLUTION, 



mony. 1 Du Pin's great antagonist, Bossuet, might incur a similar 
imputation, and be ready to partially yield the point if thereby he 
might secure the reconciliation of the hostile churches. 2 All this, 
however, could have no influence on the doctrines and practice of 
Catholicism at large, and the principle remained unaltered and 
unalterable. 



Yet it was impossible that the critical spirit of inquiry which 
marked the eighteenth century, its boldness of unbelief, and its utter 
want of faith in God and man, could leave unassailed this monument 
of primaeval asceticism, while it was so busy in undermining every- 
thing to which the reverence of its predecessors had clung. Accord- 
ingly, the latter half of the century witnessed an active controversy 
on the subject. In 1758, a canon of Estampes, named Desforges, 
who had been forced to take orders by his family, published a work 
in two volumes in which he attempted to prove that marriage was 
necessary for all ranks of ecclesiastics. The book attracted atten- 
tion, and by order of the Parlement it was burnt, September 30, 
1758, by the hangman, and the unlucky author was thrown into the 
Bastile. These proceedings were well calculated to give publicity to 
the work; it was reprinted at Douay in 1772; a German translation 
was published in 1782 at Gottingen and Munster, and an Italian 
one, with some omissions, had already appeared in 1770, without an 
acknowledged place of publication. The Abbe Villiers undertook to 
answer Desforges in a weak little volume, the "Apologie du Celibat 



1 Notwithstanding his Sorbonic de- 
gree, Du Pin is said to have been se- 
cretly married, and to have left a 
widow, who even ventured to claim the 
inheritance of his estate. He was en- 
gaged in a correspondence with "William 
Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, with 
a view to arrange a basis of reconcilia- 
tion of the Anglican Church with 
Rome, and, according to Lafitau, 
Bishop of Sisteron, in that correspond- 
ence he assented to the propriety of 
sacerdotal marriage. 

2 I cannot pretend to decide the con- 
troversy as to the alleged marriage be- 
tween Bossuet and Mdlle. Desvieux de 
Mauleon, nor to determine whether it 
is true that she and her daughters 
claimed his fortune after his death. 
Much has been written on both sides, 
and I have not the materials at hand 



to justify a positive opinion, though the 
extracts from La Baumelle's " Memoi- 
res de Madame de Maintenon " given 
by the Abbe Chavard (Le Celibat des 
Pretres, pp. 474 sqq.) would seem to 
show that there were good grounds for 
asserting the marriage. I believe, how- 
ever, that there is no doubt of Bossuet 
engaging with Leibnitz and Molanus 
in a negotiation as to the terms on 
which the Lutherans could reenter the 
Roman communion, and that he pro- 
mised, in the name of the pope, that 
Lutheran ministers admitted to the 
priesthood or episcopate should retain 
their wives. It is asserted that the pro- 
posed arrangement was nearly agreed 
to on both sides, when the pretensions 
of the House of Hanover to the English 
crown caused Leibnitz to withdraw 
from the undertaking. 



CONTKOVERSY REOPENED, 



583 



Chretien," published in 1762, which consists principally of long 
extracts from the Fathers in praise of virginity. Even Italy felt 
the movement, and an anonymous work, entitled " Pregiudizi del 
Celibato," appeared in Naples in 1765, and was reprinted in Venice 
in 1766. Some more competent champion was necessary to answer 
these repeated attacks, and the learned Abate Zaccaria brought his 
fertile pen and his inexhaustible erudition to the rescue in his " Storia 
Polemica del Celibato Sacro," which saw the light in 1774, and which 
not long afterwards was translated into German. In 1781 appeared 
a new aspirant for matrimonial liberty in the Abbe Gaudin, who 
issued at Geneva (Lyons) his work entitled " Les inconveniens du 
celibat des pretres," a treatise of considerable learning and no little 
bitterness against the whole structure of sacerdotalism and Roman 
supremacy. This was followed, in 1782, by Andreas Forster, in his 
"De Coelibatu Clericorum Dissertatio," published at Dillingen, and 
dedicated to Pius VI., for the purpose of replying to the attacks of 
the innovating Catholics. 

The latter, indeed, had some hope for the approaching realization 
of their demands. The reforms which illustrated the minority of 
Ferdinand IV. of Naples excited the priests of Southern Italy to 
petition him for the right of marriage, and Serrao, the Jansenist 
Bishop of Potenza, does not hesitate to say that the request would 
have been granted if the unfriendly relations between the courts of 
Rome and Naples had continued much longer. 1 The Emperor 
Joseph II., amid his many fruitless schemes for philosophical reform, 
inclined seriously to the notion of permitting marriage to the priest- 
hood of his dominions. In an edict of 1783 he asserted, incidentally, 
that the matter was subject to his control, 2 and the advocates of cleri- 
cal marriage confidently expected that in a very short period they 
would see the ancient restrictions swept away by the imperial power. 
A mass of controversial essays and dissertations made their appear- 
ance throughout Germany, and the well-known Protestant theologian 
Henke took the opportunity of bringing out, in 1783, a new edition 



1 Chavard, Le Celibat des Pretres, 
p. 314-5. — Davanzati, Bishop of Can- 
osa, was also in favor of abrogating the 
rule of celibacy. 

2 This view of the competence of the 
temporal power to regulate the question 
seems to have been widely received at 
this period. An anonymous work pub- 



lished in 1769^under the title of " Re- 
cherches sur l'Etat Monastique et Eccle- 
siastique," written by a good Catholic, 
asserts (p. 204), "Si le cas de donner 
des citoyens a la patrie devenoit urgent, 
le legislateur, en autorisant le mariage 
des pretres, n'entreprendroit rien sur le 
sacrement de l'Ordre." 



584 



THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION. 



of the learned work of Calixtus, " De Conjugio Clericorum," as the 
most efficient aid to the good cause. It is a striking illustration of 
the temper of the times to observe that this work, so bitterly opposed 
to the orthodox doctrines and practice, is dedicated by Henke to 
Archdeacon Anthony Ganoczy, canon of the cathedral church of 
Gross -Wardein and apostolic prothonotary. The hope of success 
brought out other writers, and the movement made sufficient progress 
to cause some hesitation in Rome as to the propriety of yielding to 
the pressure. 1 

Zaccaria again entered the lists, and produced, in 1785, his "Nuova 
Giustificazione del Celibato Sacro," in answer to the Abbe Gaudin 
and to an anonymous German writer whose work had produced con- 
siderable sensation. To this he was principally moved by a report 
that he had himself been converted by the facts and arguments ad- 
vanced by the German, an imputation which he indignantly refuted 
in three hundred quarto pages. 

The half-formed resolutions of Joseph II. led to no result, and the 
subject slumbered for a few years until the outbreak of the French 
Revolution. At an early period in that great movement, the adver- 
saries of sacerdotal asceticism bestirred themselves in bringing to 
public attention the evils and cruelty of the system. Already, in 
1789, a mass of pamphlets appeared urging the abrogation of celi- 
bacy. In 1790 the work of the Abbe Gaudin was reprinted, and 
was promptly answered by the prolific Maultrot. Even in Germany 
the same spirit again awoke, and an Hungarian priest named Katz 
published at Vienna, in 1791, a " Tractatus de conjugio et coelibatu 
clericorum," in which he argued strongly for a change. In Poland 
these doctrines made considerable progress, for in 1801 we find a 
little tract issued at Warsaw vehemently arguing against those who 
imperil their souls by violating their vows and the laws of the church. 2 
In England, a Catholic priest distinguished for talents and learning, 
Dr. Geddes, published, in 1800, a work in which he denied the 
Apostolic origin of celibacy and urged that, at most, it should only 



1 Zaccaria, in the introduction to his 
" ISTuova Giustificazione" (p. ix.), de- 
nies that the papal court entertained 
any idea of making the concession; 
but, in considering the question as to 
the power or duty of the pope to alter 
the law of celibacy (Diss. iv. cap. 6), 
his remarks show clearly that the sub- 
ject was discussed in a tone to afford 



the partisans of marriage reasonable 
grounds for hope. Among the threat- 
ening proceedings of the emperor was 
the suppression of no less than 184 
monasteries (Lecky, Hist, of Ration- 
alism, chap. vi.). 

2 Yetus et Constans in Ecclesia Cath- 
olica de Sacerdotum Coelibatu Doctrina. 
Yarsavias, 1801. 



ECCLESIASTICAL CORKUPTION 



585 



be punished by degradation from the priesthood, without entailing 
disgrace. Indeed, he argued that the rule caused more proselytes to 
Protestantism than any other cause. 1 



During this period it can hardly be supposed that the defiant 
immorality which characterized the eighteenth century had been 
favorable to the purity of a celibate priesthood. That the church, 
indeed, had made but scanty improvement in the character of its 
ministers is visible throughout the literature of the age, and I need 
only allude to a few instances where efforts at reform revealed the 
prevailing corruption. 

In France the attacks upon the vow of celibacy, to which allusion 
has already been made, seem to have given rise to a spasmodic attempt 
to regulate the church. In 1760 an arret of the Parlement of Paris 
prohibited the organization of religious congregations without express 
royal permission, verified by that body. The assembly of the clergy 
in Paris in 1766 produced no notable improvement, nor was greater 
success obtained when the temporal power intervened in the Edicts 
of 1766 and 1767. Further effort apparently was requisite, and in 
the Edict of March, 1768, Louis XV. undertook to diminish in some 
degree the causes of the more flagrant disorders among the regular 
clergy. Men were not to be allowed to take the vows under the age 
of 22, nor women under 19 ; and as the smaller religious houses were 
especially notorious for laxness of discipline, all were suppressed 
which could not number at least fifteen professed monks or nuns, 
except those attached to larger congregations. The ecclesiastical 
authorities, moreover, were emphatically commanded to make a thor- 
ough visitation, and to compel the observance of the rules of disci- 
pline of the several orders. 2 The enforcement of this edict created 
no little excitement, and several of the smaller orders narrowly es- 
caped destruction in their endeavors to evade its provisions. That 
these efforts did not succeed in accomplishing their object we may 
well believe, even without the testimony of an eye-witness. 3 As for 



1 " A Modest Apology for the Cath- 
olics of G-reat Britain," published 
anonymously in 1800 — a work singu- 
larly moderate and candid in its tone. 
Dr. Geddes had been suspended from his 
functions in consequence of a transla- 
tion of the Bible which he had pub- 
lished. See Allibone's Dictionary, I. 
657. 



2 Dupin, Manuel du Droit Pub. Ec- 
cles. Erangais. 4e Ed. Paris, 1845, p. 
274.— Edit de Mars 1768, concernant 
les Ordres Keligieux (Isambert, XXIII. 
476). 

3 See Lasteyrie's Hist, of Auricular 
Confession, translated by Cocks, Lon- 
don, 1848, Book ii. chap, iv., vi. 



586 



THE CHUECH AND THE REVOLUTION. 



the secular clergy, when Louis XV. amused himself by ordering the 
arrest of all ecclesiastics caught frequenting brothels, the number 
of victims in a short time amounted to 296, of whom no less than 
100 were priests actively engaged in the service of the altar. 1 

When the Grand-Duke Leopold of Tuscany undertook to reform 
the monasteries of his dominions and to put an end, if possible, to 
the abuse of the confessional, it led to a long diplomatic correspond- 
ence with the papal curia as to the jurisdiction over such cases. 
A public document of the year 1763 had already stated that the 
special crime in question had become less frequent, and attributed 
this improvement to the exceeding laxity of morals everywhere 
prevalent, for few confessors could be so foolish as to attempt seduc- 
tion in the confessional when there was so little risk in doing the 
same thing elsewhere. 2 Specious as this reasoning might seem, the 
facts on which it was based were hardly borne out by the investiga- 
tions of Leopold shortly after into the morals of the monastic estab- 
lishments. Nothing more scandalous is to be found in the visitations 
of the religious houses of England under Morton and Cromwell. 
The spiritual directors of the nunneries had converted them virtually 
into harems, and such of the sisters as were proof against seduction 
armed with the powers of confession and absolution suffered every 
species of persecution. It was rare for them to venture on complaint, 
but when they did so they received no attention from their ecclesi- 
astical superiors, and only the protection of the grand-ducal authority 
at length emboldened them to reveal the truth. The prioress of S. 
Caterina di Pistoia declared that, with three or four exceptions, all 
the monks and confessors with whom she had met in her long career 
were alike ; that they treated the nuns as wives, and taught them 
that God had made man for woman and woman for man ; and that 
the visitations of the bishops amounted to naught, even though they 
were aware of what occurred, for the mouths of the victims were 
sealed by the dread of excommunication threatened by their spiritual 
directors. 3 When it is considered that the convents thus converted 
into dens of prostitution were the favorite schools to which the girls 
of the higher classes were sent for training and education, it can 
readily be imagined what were the moral influences thence radiating 



1 Bouvet, De la Confession et du 
Celibat des Pretres, Paris, 1845, p. 504. 

2 Archives of Florence — Segreterio 



di Stato nella Eeggenza, Pilza 194 
No. 6. 

3 De Potter, Memoires de Scipion 
de' Eicci, I. 284 sqq. 



ECCLESIASTICAL COREUPTION 



587 



throughout society at large, and we can appreciate the argument 
above referred to, as to the ease with which the clergy could procure 
sexual indulgence without recourse to the confessional. Leopold's 
chief assistant in this struggle was Scipione de' Ricci, Bishop of 
Pistoia and Prato, whose experiences in the investigation caused him 
to induce the council of Pistoia, in 1786, to declare the duties of the 
confessional wholly incompatible with the monastic state, and, in 
view of the improbability of any permanent reform, to propose the 
abolition of the monastic orders by restricting vows to the duration 
of a twelvemonth 1 — propositions which were not approved by the 
congregation of Tuscan prelates held at Florence in 1787, and which 
were scornfully condemned by Rome. 2 Leopold, however, sought to 
palliate the evil by raising to the age of 24 the minimum limit for 
taking the vows, which the council of Trent had fixed at 16, but 
the benefit of this salutary measure was neutralized by the ease with 
which parents desiring to get rid of their children could place them 
in the institutions of the neighboring states, such as Lucca and 
Modena. 3 

Rome itself was no better than its dependent provinces, despite 
the high personal character of some of the pontiffs. When the too 
early death of Clement XIV., in 1774, cut short the hopes which 
had been excited by his enlightened rule, St. Alphonso Liguori 
addressed to the conclave assembled for the election of his successor 
a letter urging them to make such a choice as would afford reasonable 
prospect of accomplishing the much-needed reform. The saint did 
not hesitate to characterize the discipline of the secular clergy as 
most grievously lax, and to proclaim that a general reform of the 
ecclesiastical body was the only way to remove the fearful corruption 
of the morals of the laity. 4 When we hear, about this time, of two 
Carmelite convents at Rome, one male and the other female, which 
had to be pulled down because underground passages had been estab- 
lished between them, by means of which the monks and nuns lived 
in indiscriminate licentiousness, and when we read the scandalous 
stories which were current in Roman society about prelates high in 



1 Atti e Decreti del Concilio di Pis- 
toia dell' anno 1786, Pistoia, 4to. pp. 
237, 239. J FF 

3 Acta Congr. Archiep. et Episc. 
Hetrurise Sess. xviii. (Bambergas 
1790, T. I. p. 453).— Bull. Auctorem 
fidei ann. 1794 S 3 80-84. 



3 Chiesi (Eivista Cristiana, Die. 1876 
p. 470).— Concil. Trident. Sess. xxv. 
De Keg. et Mon. cap. xv. 

4 Panzini, Confessione di un Pri- 
gioniero, p. 333. 



588 



THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION, 



the church, we can readily appreciate the denunciations of St. Al- 
phonso. 1 A curious glimpse at the interior of conventual life is 
furnished by a manual for Inquisitors, written about this period by 
an official of the Holy Office of Rome. In a chapter on nuns he 
describes the scandals which often cause them to fall within the juris- 
diction of the Inquisition, and prescribes the course to be pursued 
with regard to the several offences. Among those who were forced 
to take the veil, despair frequently led to the denial of God, of 
heaven, and of hell ; feminine enmity caused accusations of sorcery 
and witchcraft, which threw not only the nunneries, but whole cities, 
into confusion ; vain-glory of sanctity suggested pretended revelations 
and visions ; and these latter were also not infrequently caused by 
licentiousness, for in these utterances were sometimes taught doctrines 
utterly subversive of morality, of which Godless confessors took ad- 
vantage to teach their spiritual daughters that there was no sin in 
sexual intercourse. As in Spain, it was the practice of the Roman 
Inquisition to treat the offenders mildly, partly in consideration of 
the temptations to which they were exposed, and partly to avoid 
scandal. 2 The contaminating influence on society at large, ema- 
nating from a church so incurably corrupted, was vastly heightened 
by the overgrown numbers of the clerical body. In 1775, for ex- 
ample, a census of the terra-firma provinces of Venice showed in 
that narrow territory no less than 45,773 priests, or one to every 
fifty inhabitants, while in the kingdom of Naples, exclusive of Sicily, 
there were, in 1769, one to every seventy-six. 3 Such overcrowding 
as this was not only in itself an efficient cause of disorder, but 
intensified incalculably the power of infection. 

The virtues of the clergy, therefore, could offer but a feeble bar- 
rier to the spirit of innovation when the passions of the French 
Revolution were brought to bear upon the immunities and distinctive 
laws of the church. The attack commenced on that which had been 
the strength, but which was now the weakness, of the ecclesiastical 
establishment. As early as the 10th of August, 1789, preliminary 
steps were taken in the National Assembly to appropriate the prop- 
erty of the church to meet the fearful deficit which had been the 



1 Tie de Scipion de' Eicci I. 289 : II. 
373 sqq. 

2 Prattica del Modo da procedersi 
nelle cause del S. Offitio cap. xxv. 
(MS. Bibl. Keg. Monacens. Cod. Ital. 
598). 



3 Esaminatore, Firenze, Ap. 15th, 
1867, p. 100. In Spain, an official re- 
turn made in 1764 estimated the number 
of ecclesiastics, regular and secular, at 
281,160 souls (Castillo y Mayone, His- 
toria de los Frailes, III. 144). 



REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES. 



589 



efficient cause of calling together the high council of the nation. 
This property was estimated as covering one-fifth of the surface of 
France, yielding with the tithes an annual revenue of three hundred 
millions of francs. So vast an amount of wealth, perverted for the 
most part from its legitimate purposes, offered an irresistible tempta- 
tion to desperate financiers, and yet it was a prelate who made the 
first direct attack upon it. On the 10th of October, 1789, Talley- 
rand, then Bishop of Autun, introduced a motion to the effect that 
it should be devoted to the national wants, subject to the proper and 
necessary expenses for public worship ; and on the 2d of November 
the measure was adopted by a vote of 568 to 346. This settled the 
principle, though the details of a transaction of such magnitude were 
only perfected by successive acts during the two following years. One 
of the earliest results was the secularization of those ecclesiastics 
whose labors did not entitle them to support, a preliminary necessary 
to the intended appropriation of their princely revenues. This was 
accomplished by an act of February 13th, 1790, by which the re- 
ligious orders were suppressed, monastic vows were declared void, 
and a moderate annuity accorded to the unfortunates thus turned 
adrift upon the world. 

The great body of the parochial clergy, patriotic in their aspira- 
tions, and suffering from the abuses of power, had hailed the advent 
of the Revolution with joy; and their assistance had been invaluable 
in rendering the Tiers-Etat supreme in the National Assembly. These 
measures, however, assailing their dearest interests and privileges, 
aroused them to a sense of the true tendency of the movement to 
which they had contributed so powerfully. A breach was inevitable 
between them and the partisans of progress. Every forward step 
embittered the quarrel. It was impossible for the one party to stay 
its course, or for the other to assent to acts which daily became more 
menacing and revolutionary. Forced, therefore, into the position of 
reactionaries, the clergy ere long became objects of suspicion and 
soon after of persecution. The progressives devised a test-oath, 
obligatory on all ecclesiastics, which should divide those who were 
loyal to the Revolution from the contumacious, and lists were kept 
of both classes. 1 Harmless as the oath was in appearance, when it 



1 "D'etre fiddle a la nation, a la loi, 
au roi, et del veiler exactement sur le 
troupeau confie a leurs soins." It was 
not only the objections of the king and 
of the pope that rendered this oath 
unpalatable, but also the fact that it 



gave adhesion to the law for the secu- 
larization of ecclesiastical property and 
of the monastic orders. It was ordered 
in the Constitution civile du Clergt, Tit. 
II. Art. 21, 38, adopted July 12 and 
promulgated Aug. 24, 1790. 



590 



THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION, 



was tendered, in December, 1790, five-sixths of the clergy throughout 
the kingdom refused it. Those who yielded to the pressure were 
termed assermentes, the recusants insermentes or refractaires, and 
the latter, of course, at once became the determined opponents of 
the new regime, the more dangerous because they were the only 
influential partisans of reaction belonging to the people. To their 
efforts were attributed the insurrections which in La Vendee and 
elsewhere threatened the most fearful dangers. They were accord- 
ingly exposed to severe legislation. A decree of November 29, 1791, 
deprived them of their stipends and suspended their functions ; an- 
other of May 27, 1792, authorized the local authorities to exile them 
on the simple denunciation of twenty citizens. Under the Terror 
their persons were exposed to flagrant cruelties, and a pretre refrac- 
taire was generally regarded, ipso facto, as an enemy to the Republic. 
Under these circumstances, sacerdotal marriage came to be looked 
upon as a powerful lever to disarm or overthrow the hostility of the 
church, and also as a test of loyalty or disloyalty. Yet the steps by 
which this conclusion was reached were very gradual. In the early 
stages of the Revolution, while it was still fondly deemed that the 
existing institutions of France could be purified and preserved, the 
National Assembly was assailed with petitions asking that the privi- 
lege of marriage should be extended to the clergy. 1 These met with 
no response, even after the suppression of the monastic orders. As 
late as September, 1790, when the Abbe Professor Cournand, of the 
College de France, made a motion in favor of sacerdotal marriage in 
the assembly of the district of St. Etienne du Mont in Paris, the 
question, after considerable debate, was laid aside as beyond the com- 
petence of that body. It was not until September 3d, 1791, that 
Mirabeau introduced into the Assembly a decree providing that no 
profession or vocation should debar a citizen from marriage or be 
considered as incompatible with marriage, and forbidding the public 
officials and notaries from refusing to ratify any marriage contract 
on such pretext. Though no allusion was made in this to ecclesi- 
astics, its object was evident, and was so admitted in the eloquent 



1 I have before me one of the pamph- 
lets issued about this time (Le Manage 
des Pretres, Paris, Laclaye, 1790, 8vo. 
pp. 102), addressed to the Assembly. 
It is a tolerably calm and well-reasoned 
argument, basing its demand upon the 
usages of the primitive church, the 



precepts of Scripture, the rights of 
nature, and public utility. The author 
asserts himself to be a priest well ad- 
vanced in life, and he assumes that the 
corruption of society disseminated by 
the licentiousness of ecclesiastics is 
generally recognized and understood. 



CLEKICAL MAEEIAGE LEGALIZED. 



591 



speecli with which he urged its adoption — a speech which contained 
a very telling resume of the arguments in favor of priestly marriage, 
but which, in its glowing anticipations of the benefits to be expected 
from the measure, affords a somewhat lamentable contrast to the 
meagreness of the realization. 1 The principle, when once established, 
was considered of sufficient importance to deserve recognition in the 
Constitution of September, 1791, a section in the preamble of which 
declares that the law does not recognize religious vows or any en- 
gagements contrary to the rights of nature or to the constitution, 2 
and this was followed, as Mirabeau had proposed, by a decree of 
September 20, 1791, which, in enumerating the obstacles to mar- 
riage, does not allude to monastic vows or holy orders. 

Professor Cournand was probably the first man of position and 
character to take advantage of the privilege thus permitted, and his 
example was followed by many ecclesiastics who had won an honor- 
able place in the church, in literature, and in science. Among them 
may be mentioned the Abbe Gaudin of the Oratoire, the author of 
a work already alluded to on the evils of celibacy, who in 1792 rep- 
resented La Vendee in the Legislative Assembly, and who in 1805 
did not hesitate to publish a little volume entitled "Avis a mon fils, 
&ge de sept ans" — although, in the preface to his work in 1781, he 
had described himself as long past the age of the passions. Even 
bishops yielded to the temptation. Lomenie, coadjutor of his uncle 
the Archbishop of Sens, Torne Bishop of Bourges, Massieu of Beau- 
vais, and Lindet of Evreux were publicly married. Many nuptials 
of this kind were celebrated with an air of defiance. Pastors an- 
nounced their approaching weddings to their flocks in florid rhetoric, 
as though assured of finding sympathy for the assertion of the tri- 
umph of nature over the tyranny of man. Others presented them- 
selves with their brides at the bar of the National Convention, as 
though to demonstrate that they were good citizens, who had thrown 
off all reverence for the obsolete traditions of the past. 

A nation maddened and torn by the extremes of hope, of rage, 
and of terror, which met the triumphal march of three hundred and 
fifty thousand hostile bayonets with the heads of its king and queen, 
which blazoned forth to Europe its irrevocable breach with the past 



1 This speech is printed in full from 
a MS. in the public library of Geneva, 
by the Abbe Chavard (Le Celibat des 
Pretres, pp. 483-500). 



2 La loi ne reconnait ni vceux reli- 
gieux, ni aucun autre engagement qui 
serait contraire aux droits naturels ou a 
la constitution. 



592 THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION. 

by instituting festivals in honor of a new Suprelne Being and pa- 
rading a courtesan through the streets of Paris as the Goddess of 
Reason, was not likely to employ much tenderness in coercing its 
internal enemies ; and chief among these it finally numbered the 
ministers of religion. To them it soon applied the marriage test. 
To marry was to acknowledge the supremacy of the civil authority, 
and to sunder allegiance to foreign domination ; celibacy was at the 
least a tacit adherence to the enemy, and a mute protest against the 
new regime. Matrimony, therefore, rose into importance as at once 
a test and a pledge, and every effort was made to encourage it. 
Among the records of the revolutionary tribunal is the trial of 
Mahue, Cure of S. Sulpice, Aug. 13, 1793, accused of having 
written a pamphlet against priestly marriage, and he was only ac- 
quitted on the ground that his crime had been committed prior to 
the adoption of the law of July 19, 1793. 1 A decree of November 
19, 1793, relieved from exile or imprisonment all priests who could 
show that their banns had been published, and when, soon afterwards, 
at the height of the popular frenzy, the Convention sent its deputies 
throughout France with instructions to crush out every vestige of 
the dreaded reaction, those emissaries made celibacy the object of 
their especial attacks. Thus, in the Department of the Meuse, 
deputy De la Croix announced that all priests who were not married 
should be placed under surveillance; while in Savoy the harsh 
measures taken against the clergy were modified in favor of those 
who married by permitting them to remain under surveillance. One 
zealous deputy ordered a pastor to be imprisoned until he could find 
a wife, and another released a canon from jail on his pledging him- 
self to marry. Many of those thus forced into matrimony were 
decrepit with years, and chose brides whose age secured them from 
all suspicions of yielding to the temptations of the flesh. Such was 
the venerable Martin of Marseilles, who, after seeing his bishop and 
two priests, his intimate friends, led to the scaffold, took, at the age 
of 76, a wife nearly 60 years old. As an unfortunate ecclesiastic, 
who had thus succeeded in weathering the storm, fairly expressed it, 
in defending himself against the reproaches of a returned emigre 
bishop, he took a wife to serve as a lightning rod. These unwilling 
bridegrooms not infrequently deposited with a notary or a trusty 
friend a protest against the violence to which they had yielded, and 



1 Desmaze, Penalites Anciennes, p. 222, Paris, 1866. 



PERSECUTION" OF CELIBACY. 



593 



a declaration that their relations with their wives should be merely 
those of brother and sister. 

Yet in this curious persecution the officials only obeyed the voice 
of the excited people. The press, the stage, all the organs of public 
opinion, were unanimous in warring with celibacy, ridiculing it as a 
fanatical remnant of superstition, and denouncing it as a crime 
against the state. The popular societies were especially vehement 
in promulgating these ideas. The Congrh fraternel of Ausch, in 
September, 1793, ordered the local clubs to enlighten the benighted 
minds of the populace on the subject, and to exclude from member- 
ship all priests who should not marry within six months. A petition 
to the National Assembly from the republicans of Auxerre demanded 
that all ecclesiastics who persisted in remaining single should be 
banished ; while a more truculent address from Condom urged im- 
periously that celibacy should be declared a capital crime, and that 
the death-penalty should be enforced with relentless severity. In 
times so terrible, when suspicion was conviction and conviction 
death, and when such were the views of those who swayed public 
affairs, it is not to be wondered at if many pious churchmen, un- 
ambitious of the crown of martyrdom, thought matrimony preferable 
to the guillotine or the noyade. 

Indeed, the only source of surprise is that so few were found to 
betray their convictions. In the vast body of the Gallican church it 
is estimated that only about 2000 marriages of men in orders- took 
place, after the reign of terror had rendered it a measure of safety. 
In addition to this, about 500 nuns were also married; and though 
this proportion is larger, it is still singularly small when we consider 
that these poor creatures, utterly unfitted by habit or education to 
take care of themselves, were suddenly ejected from their peaceful 
retreats, and cast upon a world which was raging in convulsions so 
terrible. 1 



1 I have not found it easy to form a 
satisfactory estimate of the number of 
French ecclesiastics previous to the 
Revolution. Le Bas (Dictionnaire En- 
cyclopedique de PHistoire de France, 
V. 218) gives a table, showing an ag- 
gregate of 418,206 souls, of whom 
235,147 may be considered as attached 
to the secular service, and 183,059 to 
the regular orders and canons. Of these 
latter, 100,451 were men and 82,608 
were women. On the other hand, M. 
Sauvestre (Congregations Eeligieuses, 



pp. 5, 6) quotes from the Abbe Expilly 
a statement that in 1765 there were 
79,000 monks and 80,000 nuns ; while 
he shows that other contemporary au- 
thorities reduce the number of members 
of religious orders in 1789 to 52,000 of 
both sexes. M. Charles Chabot (En^ 
cyclopedie Monastique, p. x., Paris, 
1827) computes, after elaborate tabula- 
tion, the number of ecclesiastics, regu- 
lar and secular, at 407,753 persons, 
enjoying a revenue of 127,610,57-6 
francs. 



38 



594 THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION. 

This is doubtless attributable to the steadfast resistance which the 
better part of the clergy made to the innovation, in spite of the 
danger of withstanding the popular frenzy, and in disregard of the 
laws which denounced such opposition. Even the assermentes, who 
had pledged themselves to the Revolution by taking the oath of 
allegiance, were mostly unfavorable to the abrogation of celibacy, 
and the position thus maintained by the clergy gave tone to such of 
the people as retained enough of devout feeling still to frequent the 
churches and partake of the mysteries of religion. The existence of 
an active and determined opposition is revealed by an act of August 
16th, 1792, guaranteeing the salaries of all married priests, thus 
showing that, in some places at least, their stipends had been with- 
held. Many pastors, indeed, were driven from their parishes by 
their congregations, in consequence of marriage, to put an end to 
which a decree of September 17th, 1793, ordered the communes to 
continue payment of salaries in all such cases of ejection. 

There were not wanting courageous ecclesiastics who opposed the 
innovation by every means in their power. Although Gobel, Bishop 
of Paris, a creature of the Revolution, favored the marriages of his 
clergy, a portion of his curates openly and vigorously denounced 
them, and Gratien, Archbishop of Rouen, addressed to him a severe 
reproach for his criminal weakness. The same Gratien excommuni- 
cated one of his priests for marrying, and published, July 24th, 1792, 
an instruction directed especially against such unions. For this he 
was thrown into prison, where he was long confined. Fauchet, of 
Bayeux, for the same offence, was reported to the Convention, but 
was fortunate enough to elude the consequences. Philibert, of Sedan, 
issued, January 20th, 1793, a pastoral in which he more cautiously 
.argued against the practice, and, after a long persecution, he was 
lucky to escape with a decree of costs against him. Pastorals to the 
same effect were also promulgated by Clement of Versailles, Heraudin 
of Chateauroux, Sanadon of Oleron, Suzor of Tours, and others. 

The Convention was not disposed to tolerate proceedings such as 
/these. To put a stop to them, it adopted, July 19th, 1793, a law 
punishing with deprivation and exile all bishops who interfered in 
any way with the marriage of their clergy. For a while this appears 
to have put a stop to open opposition, but when the reign of terror 
was past, and the Catholics saw a prospect of reorganizing the dis- 
tracted church, one of their earliest efforts was directed to the restora- 
tion of celibacy. Qn the 15th of March, 1795, some assermentes 



EESTOEATION OF CELIBACY. 595 

bishops, members of the Convention, issued from Paris an encyclical 
letter to the faithful, in which they denounced sacerdotal marriage in 
the strongest terms. Those who entered into such unions were de- 
clared unworthy of confidence ; the fearful constraint under which 
they had sought refuge in matrimony was pronounced to be no justi- 
fication, and even renunciation of their wives was not admitted as 
entitling them to absolution for the one unpardonable sin. 1 In a 
second letter, issued December 15th of the same year, this denuncia- 
tion was repeated in even stronger terms. 

In these manifestoes the bishops did not speak by authority. They 
could not threaten or command, for they were acting beyond or in 
opposition to the law. With the progress of reaction they became 
bolder. In 1797 the church ventured to hold a national council, in 
which it forbade the nuptial benediction to those who were in orders 
or were bound by monastic vows, thus reducing their marriages to 
the mere civil contract, and depriving them of all the sanction of 
religion. The local synods which, encouraged by the fall of the 
Directory, were held in 1800, adopted these principles as a matter of 
course, and took measures to enforce them. That of Bourges even 
prohibited the churching of women who were wives of ecclesiastics. 

This condemnation of the married clergy carried despair and deso- 
lation into the households of those who had offended, and upon whom 
the door of reconciliation was so sternly closed. Gregoire of Blois, 
a leading actor in all these scenes, records the innumerable appeals 
received from the unfortunates, who, torn by remorse and thus re- 
pudiated by the church, begged in vain for the mercy which was in- 
compatible with the respect due to the ancient and inviolable canons. 

All this, however, was merely local action. The Gallican church 
had not yet been reunited to Rome. In reconstructing a system of 
social order, Napoleon speedily recognized the necessity of religion 
in the state, and, despite the opposition of those who still believed 
in the Republic, the Concordat of 1801 restored France to its place 
in the hierarchy of Latin Christianity. There is nothing in the 
Concordat interfering with the right of the priest, as a citizen, to 
contract marriage; but as, in all affairs purely ecclesiastical, the 
internal regulation and discipline of the church were necessarily left 
to itself, the rights of the priest, as a priest, became of course subject 
to the received rules of the church, which could thus refuse the 



Lett. Encyc. 15 Mars, 1795, art. ix. (Gregoire, p. 109). 



596 



THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION". 



nuptial benediction, and suspend the functions of any one contra- 
vening its canons. In consequence of the power thus restored, when 
the question soon after arose as to the legality of sacerdotal marriages 
contracted during the troubles, the Cardinal-legate Caprara issued 
rescripts to those whose unions were anterior to the Concordat, de- 
priving them of their priestly character, reducing them to the rank 
of laymen, and empowering the proper officials to absolve them and 
remarry them to the wives whom they had so irregularly wedded. 
This created a strong feeling of indignation among the prelates who 
had carried the tabernacle through the wilderness, and who, while 
opposing such marriages most strenuously, regarded this intervention 
of papal authority as a direct assault upon the liberties of the Gal- 
lican church. Their time was past, however, and their denunciations 
of this duplication of the sacrament were of no avail. Yet the legality 
of such marriages, and the unimpaired right of priests to contract 
them, were asserted and proved by Portalis, in his masterly speech 
of April 15th, 1802, before the Corps Legislatif, advocating the 
adoption of the Concordat as a law, although he admitted that the 
duties of the priesthood and the feeling of the people rendered sacer- 
dotal celibacy desirable. 1 

Notwithstanding the authority thus restored to the church, and 
the certainty of ecclesiastical penalties following such infraction of 



1 This speech of Portalis p£re is an 
admirable commentary on the Con- 
cordat, developing its causes and con- 
sequences with a rigidity of logic and 
an enlightened spirit of faith which 
are equally creditable to the head 
and heart of the distinguished orator. 
From the portion devoted to the sub- 
ject of marriage, I quote the following, 
as embodying a clear exposition of the 
intentions of those who negotiated the 
Concordat. 

" Quelques personnes se plaindront 
peut-etre de ce que l'on n'a pa3 con- 
serve le mariage des pretres. . . . En 
effet, d'une part nous n'admettons plus 
que les ministres dont V existence est 
necessaire a l'exercice du culte, ce qui 
diminue considerablement le nombre 
des personnes qui se vouaient ancienne- 
ment au celibat. D 'autre part, pour 
les ministres memes que nous conser- 
vons, et a qui le celibat est ordonne 
par les reglements ecclesiastiques, la 
defense qui leur est. faite du mariage 
par ces reglements n'est point con- 



sacree comme empechement dirimant 
dans l'ordre civil : ainsi leur mariage, 
s'ils en contractaient un, ne serait 
point nul aux yeux des lois politiques 
et civiles, et les enfans qui en nai- 
traient seraient legitimes ; mais dans 
le for interieur et dans l'ordre religieux, 
ils s'exposeraient aux peines spirituelles 
prononcees par les lois canoniques : 
ils continueraient a jouir de leurs droits 
de famille et de cite, mais ils seraient 
tenus de s'abstenir de l'exercice du 
sacerdoce. Consequemment, sans affai- 
blir le nerf de la discipline de l'eglise, 
on conserve aux individus toute la 
liberte et tous les avantages garantis 
par les lois de l'etat ; mais il eut ete 
injuste d'aller plus loin, et d'exiger 
pour les ecclesiastiques de Prance, 
comme tels, une exception qui les eut 
deconsideres aupres de tous les peuples 
Catholiques, et aupres des Prangais 
memes, auxquels ils administreraient 
les secours de la religion" (Dupin, 
Manuel du Droit Public Eccles. Pran- 
$ais, 4eme ed. pp. 196-8). 



VARYING POLICY OF THE STATE. 597 

the Tridentine articles of faith, the practice which had been intro- 
duced could not be immediately eradicated. Priests were constantly- 
contracting marriage, and the question gave considerable trouble to 
the government, which hesitated for some time as to the policy to be 
pursued. Portalis, in 1802, as we have seen, declared the full legality 
of such marriages, and the unimpaired right of ecclesiastics to con- 
tract them; and the provisions of the code respecting marriage, 
adopted in 1803, make no allusions to vows or religious engagements 
as causing incapacity. 1 Yet in 1805, when Daviaux, Archbishop of 
Bordeaux, opposed the application of a priest named Boisset to the 
civil authorities for a marriage contract, Portalis, then minister of 
religious affairs, on being appealed to, replied that the government 
would not allow its officers to register such contracts. The local ad- 
ministrations sometimes assented to such applications and sometimes 
referred them to the central authority, until at length, in 1807, a 
definite conclusion was promulgated. This was to the effect that 
although the civil law was silent as regards such marriages, yet they 
were condemned by public opinion. The government considered 
them fraught with danger to the peace of families, as the powerful 
influence of the pastor could be perverted to evil purposes, and, if 
seduction could be followed by marriage, that influence would be 
liable to great abuse. The emperor therefore declared that he could 
not tolerate marriage on the part of those who had exercised priestly 
functions since the date of the Concordat. As for those who had 
abandoned the ministry previous to that period and had not since 
resumed it, he left them to their own consciences. Thus, in practice, 
although marriage was regarded as purely a civil institution, a limita- 
tion was introduced which was not authorized by the code, which 
rested solely upon the authority of the emperor, and which, far from 
indicating respect to the church, was a flagrant insult. As Napoleon 
withdrew himself more and more from the principles of the new order 
of things, we find him disposed to take even stronger ground in oppo- 
sition to the civil privileges accorded to the priesthood by the Con- 
cordat. The question of sacerdotal marriage continued to present 
itself under perplexing shapes, and at length the emperor, on the 
eve of his downfall, perhaps with a view to propitiate the sacerdotal 
power, proposed to apply to married priests the penalty imposed by 



598 



THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION". 



the law on bigamy. 1 It was too late, however; the empire was 
rapidly vanishing, and these suggestions were soon forgotten in the 
hurrying march of events. 2 



1 In an address to the Council of 
State, Dec. 20th, 1813, Napoleon said, 
" Le sacerdoce est une sorte de mariage ; 
le pretre etant uni a l'eglise comme 
l'epoux a son Spouse, il n'y aurait au- 
cun inconvenient a appliquer au pretre 
qui se marierait la peine de la bigamie : 
un tel ecclesiastique ne merite aucun 
sorte de consideration" — Bouhier de 
l'Ecluse, de l'Etat des Pretres en France, 
Paris, 1842, p. 17.— Chavard (Le Celi- 
bat des Pretres, pp. 409-10) quotes 
Dean Stanley as asserting, on the au- 
thority of the elder Due de Broglie, 
that Pius VIII. spontaneously offered 
to Napoleon to permit sacerdotal mar- 
riage, but that the Emperor declined 
the proposal. I cannot but think, 
however, that there must be some mis- 
take in this statement. 

2 For many of the above details I 
am indebted to the curious but ill- 
digested little work — " Histoire du 
Mariage des Pretres en France," pub- 
lished by Gregoire in 1826. Gregoire, 
though a priest of the ancien regime, 
was a sincere and consistent republi- 
can. A member of the States Gene- 
ral, of the Convention, and of the 
Council of Five Hundred, elected 
Bishop of Blois by the voice of a people 
who knew and respected him, he pre- 
served his ardent faith through all the 
excesses of the Eevolution, and his 
democratic ideas in spite of the injuries 
inflicted on his class in the name of the 
people. The sincerity and boldness of 
his character may be estimated by a 



single example. When, on the 7th of 
November, 1793, Gobel, Bishop of 
Paris, appeared before the Convention 
with twelve of his vicars and publicly 
renounced his sacred functions on the 
ground that hereafter there should be 
no other worship than that of liberty 
and equality, almost all the ecclesiastics 
in the Convention followed his ex- 
ample. To hold back at such a moment 
was dangerous in the extreme, yet Gre- 
goire had the hardihood to utter a 
defiant protest. "I am a Catholic by 
conviction and by feeling, a priest by 
choice, a bishop by the voice of the 
people, but not from the people nor 
from you do I derive my mission, and 
I will not be forced to an abjuration." 
To him perhaps more than to any one 
else is attributable the skilful manage- 
ment which carried the church through 
the storms and persecutions of the 
Eevolution, but the same inflexibility 
which maintained his Catholicism 
through the ordeal of 1793 and 1794 
caused him to stand by his republi- 
canism long after it had gone out of 
fashion. He was not to be bought or 
bullied ; the Legitimist was less tole- 
rant than the Terrorist, and under the 
Bestoration he was reduced almost to 
absolute indigence. Together with the 
other constitutional bishops, he had 
been compelled to resign his bishopric 
by order of the pope after the Concordat 
of 1801, and he was too dangerous a 
man to be rewarded for his invaluable 
services to religion. He died in 1831. 



XXXI. 
THE CHURCH Of TO-DAY. 



The question of sacerdotal marriage was left in France, on the 
collapse of the empire, in a curiously unsettled condition, giving rise 
to very remarkable contradictions in the judicial decisions which since 
then have from time to time been rendered by the tribunals as cases 
were brought before them. 

Under the Restoration, a priest named Martin, an old refractaire 
of 1792, committed the imprudence of marrying in 1815. Not long 
after he died without issue. His relatives contested the succession 
with the widow, and in 1817 the inferior court decided in her favor. 
The next year the court of appeals reversed the judgment on the 
ground that sacerdotal marriage had only been sanctioned indirectly 
by the legislation of the Revolution, and that the Charter of 1814 
(Art. 6) had restored Catholicism as the religion of the state. In 
1821, however, the final decision of the court of cassation settled 
the question in favor of the widow, thus legalizing such unions, for 
the incontrovertible reason that the code did not recognize vows or 
holy orders as causes incapacitating for marriage. 1 

Even yet, however, the matter was not held to be finally disposed of. 
In 1828, Louis Therese Saturnin Dumonteil, a priest of Paris, who 
desired to contract marriage, failed to obtain from the courts the 
customary assistance required by the law to set aside the refusal of 
his parents, who declined their assent to his projected union. The 
case was argued in all its bearings on civil and ecclesiastical law, and 
he found the tribunals resolutely opposed to him. When the Revo- 
lution of July unsettled the public mind with visions of the revival 
of the principles of '89, Dumonteil endeavored to carry out his pro- 



1 Gregoire, op. cit. p. 102. 



600 



THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 



ject. The lower court decided in his favor, March 26, 1831, but 
the higher courts reversed the decision and pronounced definitely 
that priests could not contract civil marriage, 1 and this in spite of 
the Charter of 1830, which simply affirmed Catholicism to be the 
religion of the majority of Frenchmen, while that of 1814 had 
declared it to be the religion of the state. 

This curiously vexed question seems incapable of positive solution. 
The case of Dumonteil apparently discouraged aspirants for clerical 
marriage during the next thirty years, for I have met with no 
allusions to any attempt in that direction until 1861. In that year 
M. de Brou-Lauriere, a priest already debarred from his sacred func- 
tions, engaged himself in marriage with Mdlle. Elizabeth Fressanges, 
of Deuville near Perigueux. On calling upon the mayor of the vil- 
lage to perform the ceremony and register the contract, that func- 
tionary refused to act. He was supported by the public authorities, 
and the expectant bridegroom was obliged to appeal to the tribunals to 
obtain his rights. The question was warmly contested and thoroughly 
argued, and it was not until a year had elapsed that the court of Peri- 
gueux rendered a decision ordering the mayor to perform his functions 
and to marry the patient couple. The case was then carried to the 
superior court at Bordeaux, which reversed the previous decision. 

Again, in 1864, in the case of the Abbe Chataigneu, the court of 
Angouleme decided that a priest was, under the law of France, not 
competent to contract civil marriage. 2 On the other hand, in 1870, 
the court of Algiers, in the case of a M. Q , delivered an elabo- 
rate decision to the effect that in France there is no law forbidding 
the civil marriage of priests. 3 Yet in 1878 the court of cassation 
confirmed a decision of the court of Rennes, pronouncing null and 
void the marriage of a priest, at the instance of his nephew and neice, 
to whom he had bequeathed his property by a will anterior to the 
marriage. When M. Loyson (Pere Hyacinthe) married Mrs. Merri- 
man, in 1872, the ceremony was performed in London, at the office 
of the Registrar of Marriages, and M. Loyson gave as the reason of 
his seeking a foreign land the refusal of the French officials to con- 



1 Bouhier de l'Ecluse, op. cit. It 
was apparently this case which led to 
the publication, under date of Monaco, 
1829, of the " Considerazioni impar- 
ziali sopra la legge del Celibato Eccle- 
siastico, proposte dal Professore 
C. A. P." — a tolerably well written 



summary of the arguments against the 
rule. 

2 Talmadge's Letters from Florence, 
p. 166. 

3 Chavard, Le Celibat des Pretres, 
pp. 525-30. 



CASES OF CLEKICAL MAKRIAGE. 601 

firm the civil ceremony. So the Abbe Chavard, vicar at Marseilles, 
in 1874, went to Geneva for the same purpose, where he continued 
his priestly functions ; and this leads me to regard as exceedingly 
improbable a recent statement in the daily journals that priestly 
marriages occur in France at the rate of twenty or thirty a year. 
In fact, so lately as September, 1883, there was before the courts 
a case which shows how uncertain is the question still in France. A 
certain Abbe Junqua was expelled from the church and was con- 
demned to three months' imprisonment for continuing to wear the 
priestly robes. He subsequently married and engaged in trade, when 
he failed, and his wife sought to secure her dowry from the bankrupt 
assets, but was resisted on the ground that her marriage was illegal 
under the Concordat, although the church had itself deprived the 
husband of his ecclesiastical character. 

In Switzerland I have met with two or three cases of such mar- 
riages, but they have no special significance. In one of them, occur- 
ring in Lucerne some thirty years ago, the priest left the church in 
order to marry, and lived with his wife until her death, in 1880, when 
he permitted her to be buried as a Catholic, and had the mortifica- 
tion of seeing her name entered on the register, publicly exposed in 
the parish church, as an unmarried woman. 

In Wiesbaden, in 1821, a priest named Koch, with the permission 
of the authorities, abandoned the priesthood and applied to the cure 
of the place to marry him, when, meeting with a refusal, he had the 
ceremony performed by a Protestant pastor, and was promptly ex- 
communicated by the Yicar of Ratisbon. Not deterred by this, in 
1828 a hundred and eighty priests of Baden petitioned the secular 
power for permission to marry, and the Chamber of Deputies showed 
a disposition to grant the request. This effort was imitated in 1831 
by the Catholic clergy of Silesia, but the movement was repressed 
by the Prussian government; and in 1833, at Treves, a clerical 
association was formed to carry out the same object. 1 These efforts 
brought forth from Gregory XVI. an encyclical letter, in which he 
urged the faithful to stand by the canons, and severely condemned 
the weakness of some prelates who were disposed to yield. 2 Some 
similar movements in Austria in the next decade led Pius IX., almost 
immediately after his accession to the papal chair, in his encyclical 



1 J. M. Cayla, Les Cures maries par le Concile, Paris, 1869. 

2 Encyc. Mirari vos. 



602 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 

letter of November 9th, 1846, to condemn the foul conspiracy against 
celibacy which was favored by ecclesiastics plunged in sensuality and 
forgetful of their own dignity. 1 In 1851, moreover, he took especial 
pains to stigmatize a work, published in Lima by Francisco de Paula 
in 1848, entitled "Defensa de la Autoridad de los Gobiernos," which 
impiously sought to decentralize the church, and which took strong 
grounds against enforced celibacy. 2 

How immovable, indeed, is the position of the hierarchy on this 
matter is shown by the case of Panzini. Panzini is, or was, a 
Capuchin monk who, in 1854, conceived the idea that the greater 
part of the evils under which the establishment labors are the result 
of celibacy and its attendant immorality. He addressed to the pope 
an anonymous memorial urging him to submit the question to the 
bishops then assembled in Rome, and followed this with two similar 
subsequent applications. Finally, in the troubles of 1859, antici- 
pating the assembling of a European congress, he resolved to print 
an essay on the subject, addressed to all the bishops of the church, 
thinking that the congress would afford him an opportunity of reach- 
ing them. The printer to whom he confided his manuscript promptly 
placed the dangerous matter in the hands of Cardinal Antonelli, when 
Panzini was at once thrown into prison and delivered to the Inqui- 
sition. After a trial which lasted six months, he was condemned to 
twelve years' incarceration and perpetual suspension from the sacer- 
dotal functions which were his only source of livelihood. After two 
years of his sentence had expired, he was released at the instance of 
the Italian government, and in 1865 he published his essay, re- 
written from memory, under the title of " Pubblica Confessione di 
un Prigioniero dell' Inquisizione Komana ed origine dei mali della 
Chiesa Cattolica." 

Now, Panzini's persecution arose solely from his affirming that 
enforced celibacy is impolitic and unnatural. He professed un- 
bounded reverence for the church in all matters of faith, and claimed 
that the point at issue was merely one of discipline on which the 
church might make a mistake. Even here, however, he was careful 
to declare his measureless admiration for voluntary asceticism. Vir- 
ginity he believed to be immensely superior to matrimony, and he 
anathematized as cheerfully as the council of Trent could wish all 
who should proclaim the contrary. Even monasticism he defended 



Encyc. Qui pluribus. 2 Litt. Apostol. Multiplies inter. 



ITS POLICY. 603 

as a state of perfection recommended by Christ. His sole objective 
point was the rigidity of the law which renders the single state indis- 
pensable to all ecclesiastics, and he essayed to prove that this is in 
direct antagonism to all the general principles of Catholic theology, 
that the purity which is its pretext is impossible to enforce, and that 
the effort itself is most disastrous to the church and to the faithful. 
The authorities were not disposed to consider that these opinions 
were an allowable dissidence on matters of policy, and they hastened 
to brand them as heretical. In the sentence passed upon Panzini 
the Inquisition took occasion to stigmatize as heresy the assertion 
that enforced celibacy is contrary to nature, that it is a stumbling- 
block and the cause of perpetual transgression. 1 That this theory 
was enforced in practice so long as the church could control the secu- 
lar power is shown in the case of an Italian priest who, preferring 
to sanctify love by marriage rather than to indulge in illicit intrigue, 
married and fled with his bride to Africa, seeking among the Infidel 
the liberty denied him in Christendom. Three children blessed his 
union, but the unresting vigilance of the church discovered his 
retreat, when, with the aid of the French consulate, he was seized, 
carried back to Naples, and thrown into prison to repent indefinitely 
over his errors. 2 

There evidently could be no reasonable ground for expecting a 
change of policy in this respect on the part of the Roman curia, and 
this was recognized in 1866 by some Catholic priests of Hungary, 
who desiring liberty of marriage, and seeing the futility of antici- 
pating it at the hands of their superiors, united in petitioning the 
National Diet for the requisite permission. Yet in spite of the ex- 
travagance of supposing that a body which, since the Council of 
Trent, has become so thoroughly centralized as the church, would 
listen to the wishes of its lower classes, there were not wanting those 
who imagined that the Council of the Vatican in 1870 would adopt 
the discipline of the Eastern Church and permit marriage to the in- 
ferior orders. Any such expectations were destined to be disap- 
pointed as soon as the preliminary machinery of the council became 
known. A eongregazione centrale was appointed by Pius IX. in 
advance, consisting exclusively of cardinals connected with the In- 
quisition, and to this body was delegated the sole determination of 
the matters to be submitted to the council for discussion. Under 



1 Panzini, pp. 16, 58, 102, 143, 201, 401. 2 Ibid. p. 123. 



604 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 

this congregazione, and presided over by its members, were five con- 
suite, to act as sub-committees on the subjects respectively confided 
to their deliberations. The consulta on faith and dogma was under 
the presidency of Cardinal Bilio, notorious as the compiler of the 
Syllabus of December, 1864 ; and that on canons and discipline was 
committed to Cardinal Catarini, whose whole career had been passed 
in the Inquisition, and who had acquired a sinister fame by his 
rigorous punishment of all attempts at reform. If, as the church 
asserts, the proceedings of general councils are under the immediate 
operation of the Holy Ghost, it will be seen what reverent care was 
observed to keep Him in due subjection, and to spare the church the 
scandal of being brought, by thoughtless innovators, into opposition 
with Him. 

As the destined outcome of the council was simply the dogma of 
papal infallibility, the hopes of the anti-celibatarians were transferred 
to the schism caused by that dogma, and known as that of the Old 
Catholics. In 1875, a Dean Suczinsky married the Baroness 
Gazewaska, and joined the schismatics, when the Prussian govern- 
ment decided to protect him in the enjoyment of his temporalities, 
and his new brethren agreed to receive him, and thus committed 
themselves on the question of celibacy — a decision confirmed in 1878 
by the Synod of Bonn, which decreed, by a vote of 75 against 22, 
that the prohibition of the canons is not an obstacle to the marriage 
of ecclesiastics, or to the cure of souls by married priests. Yet the 
Old Catholic movement, despite the well-earned eminence of some of 
its leaders, such as Dollinger, was destined to failure from the start. 
It sought a compromise where no compromise was possible — asserting 
the right of private judgment against the Church Universal only to a 
certain point, and that point one which concerned itself rather with 
intellectual subtleties than actual daily affairs. The unbearable op- 
pressions which lent practical application to the polemics of Luther 
no longer existed ; and the secular powers of Europe felt too secure 
in their ability to defend themselves against ecclesiastical encroach- 
ment to give substantial aid to the opponents of Borne. The Old 
Catholic schism may therefore already be regarded almost as a thing 
of the past, and one which will exercise no influence over the future. 

A more serious blow than that which Dollinger and his friends 
sought to aim at the Boman curia has been dealt, in the matter of 
marriage, by the adoption, in successive Catholic states, of what is 
known as Civil Marriage, by which matrimony is withdrawn from 



CIVIL MAERIAGE. 605 

the exclusive control of the church, and the sacrament and benedic- 
tion are declared to be accidents not necessary to the legal status of 
husband and wife or to the legitimacy and heritable capacity of chil- 
dren. We have already seen that this was one of the legislative 
results of the French Revolution, and the example thus early set by 
France has been followed of late by Italy and Austria after its adop- 
tion, in 1853 by Sardinia, as one of the earliest reformatory measures 
of Cavour. Yet the church positively refuses to regard such mar- 
riages as entitled to respect. When the project was under discus- 
sion in Italy, the Unita Cattolica, one of the papal organs, in its issue 
of July 16th, 1864, did not hesitate to assert that the establishment 
of civil matrimony was establishing the liberty of licentiousness, and 
that, after having scattered houses of ill-fame throughout Italy, it 
would convert the whole peninsula into one brothel. In a similar 
spirit, Pius IX., in his allocution of October 30th, 1866, denounced 
it as leading to an organized system of scandalous concubinage. 
When, in May, 1868, Austria followed the example of Italy, Pius, 
within a month, delivered an allocution, in which he not only con- 
demned the "abominable law," but declared it to be null and void; 
and Cardinal Rauscher, Archbishop of Vienna, issued a manifesto, 
in which he not only denied that the civil contract constituted mar- 
riage and directed that children sprung from such unions should be 
entered on the parish registers as neither legitimate nor illegitimate, 
but gave positive instructions that absolution should be denied, even 
in articulo mortis, to all parties who had cohabited in such unions — 
thus stigmatizing them as worse than concubinage. In a similar 
spirit, when, in 1869, civil marriage was proclaimed under the short- 
lived republic of Spain, the clergy, under inspiration from the Vati- 
can, denounced it as concubinage, and threatened to suspend the 
celebration of the Mass. With the restoration of the monarchy the 
law was promptly repealed, and an effort to restore it was rejected 
by an emphatic vote of the Cortes in February, 1883, though, with 
the more liberal tendencies that have since arisen, the matter is again 
proposed for discussion. Leo XIII. has been vigorous in his oppo- 
sition to the innovation. In his first Encyclical, issued April 21st, 
1878, he declared that " citizens, profaning the dignity of Christian 
marriage, have adopted legal concubinage in place of religious matri- 
mony;" and he returned to the attack in a special Encyclical on the 
subject, published February 10th 1880. In this he assumes that, as 
"by the will of Christ the church alone can and ought to legislate 



606 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 

and decide concerning sacraments, so it is out of the question to 
attempt to transfer any, even the smallest part, of her power to the 
government of the state," and therefore " judicial sentences on con- 
jugal contracts, as to whether they have been entered upon rightly 
or wrongly," are a direct infringement of the rights of the church, 
whether those judgments be adverse or not to the canons. 

The earlier passages of this Encyclical are so warm and eloquent 
a defence of the holiness of matrimony, as the natural condition of 
man decreed by God, that it would probably, trouble its author to 
explain why so exalted and divine a state should be prohibited to 
the ministers of the God who devised it and fitted his creatures 
specially for it. Yet the persistent and bitter opposition of the 
church to the civil marriage laws may not unreasonably be attributed 
to the fact that under them the state has the power to recognize and 
permit clerical marriage. For more than half a century such laws 
had existed in France, but as the French tribunals leaned towards 
upholding ecclesiastical celibacy, they were acquiesced in compara- 
tively in silence. When Italy, however, followed the example, it 
was seen that the temper of the Italian government would lead to 
construing them in a sense favorable to priestly liberty, and hence 
the opposition, which has been justified and intensified by the result. 
Immediately on the passage of the Civil Marriage Act, Dr. Prota, 
of Naples, an energetic reformer within the church, in a letter of 
October 80th, 1865, advised all his clerical friends to marry and to 
persist in the exercise of their functions, "and the more who do so 
at once and simultaneously the safer for all, for the bishops will ven- 
ture the less to persecute you in the face of public opinion." Accord- 
ingly cases of priestly marriage commenced to occur, and when they 
were contested their validity was confirmed by the tribunals. The 
superior courts of Genoa, Trani, and Palermo successively decided 
in this sense, and finally, in 1869, occurred the case of Andrea 
Treglia, of the diocese of Salerno, which settled the question in 
Naples. The municipal officers of Vietri refused to marry him ; the 
court of Salerno decided against him, but when the matter was car- 
ried up to the court of appeals of Naples judgment was rendered in 
his favor, and he was married forthwith — thus legitimating the unions 
of some fifty priests who had preceded him, without the question 
having been settled by the tribunal of last resort. In the organ of 
the reforming Catholics of Naples, the Emancipatore Oattolica, it 
is curious to see the successive marriages chronicled with the same 



MAINTENANCE OF CELIBACY. 



607 



satisfaction as that evinced by Spalatin in the stormy days of 
Luther. 1 

Yet the whole question is one of but slender practical importance. 
In no country is the Catholic church subservient to the state. It 
controls its own sacraments, and no government is likely to venture 
upon interference with it in its own sphere. While, therefore, it 
may be deprived of the power to persecute and punish those of its 
members who enter upon civil marriage, it yet possesses the ability 
to deprive them of their functions, which in most cases is equivalent 
to depriving them of bread; and it has an unquestioned right to 
expel them from its communion. The priest who marries, therefore, 
is virtually separated from his church and deprived of his means of 
livelihood — motives which, combined with the moral forces at work 
to keep men within the accustomed bounds, are quite sufficient to 
prevent defection from growing common, or to render marriage with 
a priest attractive to women above the lowest class. Even in the 
United States, where there is no legal impediment to priestly mar- 
riage, and the tone of society is such as rather to welcome those who 
escape from the pale of Borne, such cases are very rare. A few 
years since one occurred in Philadelphia, and in February, 1882, 
Father Agudi, of Hartford, committed matrimony, but these are the 
only instances which I remember to have noted for many years past. 
While, therefore, the civil marriage laws of Europe unquestionably 
loosen the ties which in this respect bind the priest to his church, 
there are still sufficient material and moral forces at work to prevent 
desertions from this cause from assuming any serious proportions. 



Predictions, as a rule, are idle, and yet it would appear entirely 
safe to assume that those who look forward to a change in the policy 
of the church as regards the enforcement of celibacy among its 
ministers are prompted rather by their wishes than by judgment, or 
by knowledge of the influences at work. It matters little what may 
be the aspirations of the vast body of men who form the working 
ecclesiastical force — the humble priests and cures upon whom it de- 
pends for its support among the populations. The autocratic theocracy, 
founded in the dark ages, and strengthened by the council of Trent, 



1 Naples was, perhaps, the first king- 
dom in Europe to promulgate a civil 
marriage law, and to withdraw matri- 
monial cases from ecclesiastical juris- 



diction. This was one of the reforms 
of the minority of Ferdinand IV. ahout 
the year 1760. See Colletti's History 
of Naples, Horner's Translation, I. 107. 



608 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 

received its final and irrevocable shape when the church submissively 
adopted the Vatican decree, which declared " that the Roman pontiff, 
when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office 
of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme 
apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals, 
to be held by the universal church, by the divine assistance promised 
him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the 
divine Redeemer willed that his church should be endowed for de- 
fining doctrine regarding faith or morals ; and that therefore such 
definitions are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent 
of the church. But if any one — which may God avert — presume to 
contradict this definition let him be anathema." l It would be futile 
to imagine after this that any pressure could be brought to bear upon 
the Roman curia sufficient to induce a change in its immemorial 
policy — a change, moreover, which would overwhelm it with the 
bitterest humiliation by contradicting all its teachings since the days 
of St. Jerome. What was so unbendingly refused to all the princes 
and nearly all the clergy of Catholic Christendom in the doubtful 
days of the Reformation will not be granted now, when, despite the 
destruction of the temporal power in Italy, the spiritual influence of 
the church is as great as ever, and it sees the results of its policy in 
the rapidly extending area of its domination. When Pius IX. could 
boast that during his single pontificate he had founded twenty-nine 
metropolitan sees and one hundred and thirty episcopal dioceses, 
there would seem to be no valid reason, from the stand-point of the 
Vatican, for an act so revolutionary as the abrogation of celibacy, 
which would convert its janizaries into householders, with human 
interests dissociated from those of the church-militant. 

The monastic orders have not escaped the innovating spirit of the 
nineteenth century. In Spain, the revolutionary cortes of 1820 
enacted a law suppressing all the existing monastic foundations, ex- 
cepting the Knights of Malta and the Hospitalarios de San Juan, 
and further prohibiting the founding of new institutions and the ad- 
ministering of vows ; but when in 1823 the constitutional govern- 
ment fell under French bayonets, the Orders reestablished themselves 
and took a bloody revenge upon their persecutors. Again in 1836 
the government of Isabella II. undertook the same task, excepting 



1 Cone. Vatican, ann. 1870 Const. Dogmat. I. cap. iv. I use Cardinal Man- 
ning's version. 



ATTACKS ON MONACHISM. 609 

tlie Padres de las Escuelas Pias, the Hospitalarios de San Juan, and 
the Clerigos de la Mision, but the attempt was short-lived ; as was 
also that of 1868 under the Republic. In the Netherlands, a series 
of laws adopted between 1818 and 1826 forbade the admission of 
novices in the contemplative orders, which, being of no public utility, 
had no claim for recognition ; and irrevocable vows, moreover, were 
declared illegal. In 1820 a similar effort was made in Naples, but 
it was unsuccessful. In the New World still more sweeping reforms 
have been undertaken. Thus Paraguay, in 1824, suppressed all 
monasteries as useless ; Brazil, in 1829, prohibited the entrance of 
new devotees in the existing foundations, thus condemning them to 
gradual extinction ; and in 1851 New Grenada not only expelled 
the Company of Jesus and forbade the establishment of any Order 
professing the doctrine of passive obedience, but threw open the doors 
of all religious establishments, and promised legal protection to those 
who should abandon them. Ten years later it suppressed them 
altogether, and in 1874 its example was followed in Venezuela. 1 
In 1849, one of the first acts of the Roman Republic was to liberate 
all monks and nuns from obedience to their vows ; and in 1853 
Cavour suppressed all the monastic houses of the Kingdom of 
Sardinia, applying their property to the improvement of the clergy, 
in spite of the superstitious fears excited by the almost simultaneous 
deaths of several members of the royal family. After the formation, 
of the Kingdom of Italy, the law of June 28th, 1866, completed the 
suppression of all the religious houses, pensioned or subsidized their 
members, and confiscated their property. This process of seculari- 
zation was rapidly carried out, and early in 1867 the journals 
reported that nearly all the inmates of the monasteries were dispersed, 
some of them returning to their families, some of them accepting 
refuge offered by the charitable, but most of them clubbing together. 
and hiring houses in which to live as of old. Two exceptions, 
indeed, were made in the enforcement of the law. Monte Casino, 
the venerable mother of western monachism, was spared, and pro- 
vision made for its maintenance as a national monument; while 
Savonarola's convent of San Marco was similarly favored, rather 
perhaps because of its frescoes than of its historical associations. 
Against all this the church of course protested vigorously, pronounc- 



1 Castillo y Mayone, II. 247, 254.— 
Panzini, pp. 358-63. — Alloc. Acerbissi- 
mum, 27 Sept. 1852. — Encyc. Incredi- 



17 Sept. 1863.— Cha- 
vard, op. cit. p. 263. 



39 



610 THE CHUECH OF TO-DAY. 

ing the suppression of the orders and the secularization of their pos- 
sessions to be null and void ; but the readiness with which purchasers 
were found to give even more than the appraised value of the prop- 
erty, shows how futile was resistance to the tendency of the age. 

So great a social revolution was of course not effected without 
much of individual suffering, which, in some cases at least, was not 
diminished by the methods adopted in enforcing the law. The fact 
that in 1856, 8000 monks petitioned Pius IX. for secularization, 
shows that the ideas of the age had penetrated into some of the 
monasteries, but in the greater number of cases the inmates were 
naturally averse to the change. Panzini, who can assuredly not be 
regarded as a prejudiced witness, speaks with bitter indignation of 
the files of soldiery sent to drive from their houses the terrified nuns, 
who were thrown upon the world without the means of subsistence 
or the training to earn a livelihood, while their vows precluded them 
from marrying or from worldly employment. Even the private 
fortunes brought by them in many cases to their convents shared the 
common fate of confiscation, and they sought in vain to have their 
dowers restored to them. 1 It is impossible not to feel sympathy for 
those whose misfortune consists in having been born too late, and 
who are made to expiate the sins of a system which they have rever- 
ently received from their forefathers. The student of the past, 
moreover, may be pardoned a feeling of regret at the destruction of 
the venerable institutions which, for a thousand years, fostered the 
religious growth of Christendom ; but the civilization which they 
rendered possible has outgrown them. In the history of develop- 
ment it is inevitable that Zeus should dethrone his father Cronos ; 
.and the progress of humanity demands the removal of that which has 
outlived its usefulness, and has become only a stumbling-block in the 
path of human improvement. 

Pius IX. himself had felt the need of some measure of reform in 
the religious orders, but was powerless to enforce it. It is asserted 
that before his early liberal tendencies had become completely eradi- 
cated, on his return from Gaeta, he entertained the idea of rendering 
ilife in common indispensable in all monastic institutions, of substi- 
tuting for the irrevocable vow one which should be renewable at a 
fixed interval, and of deferring all ordinations to the priesthood until 
tthe applicant should have entered on his 36th year. These sensible 



1 Panzini, pp. 596-7. 



MONASTIC REACTION. 



611 



measures, however, were opposed so strenuously by all the officials 
that the Pope gave way — the General of the Franciscans even pro- 
claiming vehemently that they would assuredly result in the destruc- 
tion of all the religious orders. 1 It would seem that Pius eventually, 
in this respect as in others, fell completely into the hands of the 
ultra-conservatives, for though in 1857 he defined that the simple 
vow of the novitiate should not be taken before the age of 16, and 
that the irrevocable vow should be deferred until the accomplishment 
of a novitiate of three years, yet the following year he decreed that 
the simple vow of the novice was irrevocable, except by papal dis- 
pensation, unless, indeed, the general of the order should see fit to 
expel the postulant. 2 It is remarked, moreover, that while he not 
infrequently exercised his dispensing power in releasing worthy ap- 
plicants from the vows of poverty and obedience, he never absolved 
them from that of chastity ; 3 though it is not unreasonably urged that 
all enlightened legislation holds engagements, even in matters of 
trifling import, to be invalid when made by minors, while the church 
permits, and even incites, children in their sixteenth year to enter 
into obligations the nature of which they are unable to appreciate, 
and then unyieldingly exacts of them the rigid execution of the rash 
promise, under pain of eternal damnation. 

Yet, notwithstanding these successive shocks, monasticism has 
rarely been more flourishing or more vigorous than of late years. 
Warned by the successive secularization of its temporalities in one 
country after another, the church has learned to give to the monastic 
system the direction in which its evils are least sensibly felt, its bene- 
fits to humanity are greatest, and the influence which it is capable 
of exerting is most serviceable to the hierarchy. Though at times 
mistaken in the spirit of the age ; though often misled by pride, by 
ambition, and by avarice, the Roman church has missed its aim and 
mistaken its vocation, yet, upon the whole, it has manifested that 
adaptation to the wants of successive generations which is the real 
secret of its power and the condition of its success. Clearly recog- 
nizing the scant toleration which our hard-working nineteenth cen- 



1867, 



19 Mar. 



p. 396. 

2 Encyc. Neminem 
1857. — Panzini, pp 

3 Panzini, p. 123. An example of 
this is to be seen in the case of Saurin 



latet, 
535-6. 



vs. Starr and Kennedy, which excited 
so much interest in England in 1869 by 
its curious revelations of the petty 
tyrannies and sordid miseries which 
sometimes at least form a feature of 
conventual life. 



612 



THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY, 



tury lias for holy idleness and unproductive sanctity, it moulds its 
institutions to meet the necessities of the age. It no longer glories 
in new and fantastic forms of worship or insane feats of asceticism — 
not the pillar of Stylites, the poverty of Francis, or the thong of 
the Flagellants 1 — but it seeks to organize systems by which the 
beneficence of the many may be efficiently administered by the 
trained labor of the few. It endeavors no longer to agglomerate 
around idle communities the wealth which could only pander to their 
vices, but rather to render useful by associated action the benevolent 
self-abnegation which in other communions is apt to be lost or frit- 
tered away for lack of judicious organization and direction. When 
thus the vow of celibacy is uttered, not in the hope of a life of ease 
and sensual indulgence, not in the pride of Pharisaical holiness, not 
in the lust of exaggerated maceration, not in the hope of purchasing 
by solitude and mortification the favor of an all-merciful Creator, 
but for the single-minded purpose of devoting a life to elevating 
fellow-creatures from degradation or to relieving their physical and 
mental miseries, no one can deny that institutions which in their 
wantonness of prosperity accomplished so much of evil possess 
fruitful germs of good to be developed through adversity and tribu- 
lation. 

The results of this wise policy have shown themselves especially 
in France and Belgium. When, in 1625, St. Vincent de Paul 
founded the Order of the Sisters of Charity, he accomplished a 
work which was destined to prove as useful to the church as the 
mendicant and preaching orders which resuscitated it in the thir- 
teenth century, or the Company of Jesus, which enabled it to set 
bounds to the Protestant Reformation. It was a return to the 
primal and vital principles of Christianity, which bound anew the 
peoples to the hierarchy and bridged over the all but impassable 
gulf between them. 

This tie, so delicate and yet so firm, proved lasting. Even amid 
the horrors of the Revolution, when conventual vows were forbidden, 
and the monastic orders were scattered ruthlessly abroad, the gentle 



1 Yet, to meet the spiritual wants of 
all classes, there are still congregations 
which practise the most severe ascetic 
austerities. Thus, in 1883, a descrip- 
tion of the Barefooted Clares in Paris 
shows that, out of eighteen members, 
but four are more than twenty-two 
years of age, the severity of discipline 



causing nearly all who enter to die 
young. No fire is allowed, even that 
in the kitchen being arranged to pre- 
vent access ; sleep is only had on a 
narrow board, meat is only eaten on 
Christmas Day, and silence is enforced 
until some of the nuns lose the power 
of forming connected sentences. 



CHARITABLE ASSOCIATIONS, 



613 



virtues and the tireless ministrations of the Sisters of Charity won 
for them respect and toleration from the cruel fanatics who respected 
and tolerated nothing else. When, even under the Concordat of 
1801, the reestablishment of monastic orders was strictly forbidden, 
and those which endeavored timidly to organize themselves under 
the names of Peres de la Foi, Victimes de I 'Amour de Dieu, Coeur 
de Jesus, etc., were broken up in 1804 without ceremony, 1 exceptions 
were made in favor of the charitable associations of females, the mis- 
sionary societies of Saint-E sprit and the Lazaristes, and the brother- 
hood of the -E coles Chretiennes. The missionary societies proved 
to be a focus of reactionary intrigue, which the First Empire was 
powerful enough to crush. They were accordingly suppressed in 
1809, but at the same time an imperial decree placed under the 
fostering care of Madame Laetitia the women who devoted them- 
selves to works of charity and mercy. Annual appropriations for 
their support were regularly made, and, thus favored, they prospered 
amazingly. The religious activity of the people seemed to flow in 
this channel with redoubled force from its long retention, and in the 
eight years from 1807 to 1815 there were no less than 1261 congre- 
gations authorized — an average of 157 per annum. At the same 
time the state refused to recognize the right of any person to abstract 
himself irrevocably from society. The law wisely prohibited engage- 
ments for life in any service, and this was held applicable to the 
religious congregations, in which, by the decree of 1809, the period 
of engagement was limited to five years. 2 

In spite of the favor shown to the charitable associations, the pre- 
judice against the monastic system was still so strong that the 
Restoration, with all its reactionary tendencies, did not dare to run 
counter to the convictions of the people. The law of 1809 forbidding 



1 The Tires de la Foi, also known as 
Adorateurs de Jesus and Paccanaristes, 
were Jesuits in disguise ; the Society des 
Victimes de I' Amour de Dieu were Qui- 
etists. For the Eeport of M. Portalis, 
recommending their suppression, see 
Dutilleul, Hist, des Corporations Re- 
ligieuses en France, Paris, 1846, pp. 
411 sqq. For an exceedingly interest- 
ing sketch of modern French mona- 
chism, see also Ch. Sauvestre's " Les 
Congregations Religieuses " (Paris, 
1867) — a work to which I desire to 



acknowledge my indebtedness for much 
that follows. 

2 Decret du 18 Fev. 1809 Sect. n. 
Art. 8 (Dupin, Droit Eccles. p. 295). 
This regulation, I believe, is still in 
force, and the members of these bodies 
are accustomed to renew their engage- 
ments every five years. From the po- 
sition taken by Bishop Fabre, of Mont- 
real, in April, 1883, in the case of a 
young woman who desired to leave her 
convent, I presume that the same regu- 
lation is in force in the Dominion of 
Canada. 



614 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 

male congregations was never repealed, and the most that the Bour- 
bons ventured openly to do was to authorize a few by special decree, 
such as the Lazaristes, the Missions Etrangeres, &c. Meanwhile 
the female congregations continued to increase ; a general law was 
enacted in May, 1825, providing for their authorization under defi- 
nite provisions, and between 1815 and 1830, 643 new ones were 
officially recognized. The efforts made from 1825 to 1827, under 
Charles X., to introduce the Jesuits and other male orders gave rise 
to lively agitation, and the elections of 1827 settled the question 
definitely in the negative. 1 The Revolution of 1830 put an end for 
the time to all hope of reestablishing the monastic system in France, 
and a law in 1834 specially affirmed the application of Art. 291 of 
the Penal Code, directed against unauthorized associations, to those 
for religious purposes. The constitutional government of Louis 
Philippe showed itself persistently hostile to monachism. It is true 
that in 1840 Lacordaire succeeded in obtaining sufferance for his 
order of Dominicans, but this was exceptional ; and even towards 
the female orders the policy of the monarchy was repressive. During 
the eighteen years of its existence, but fourteen authorizations for 
founding new congregations were granted, while the Jesuits, who 
had ventured to enter the kingdom without permission, were formally 
expelled in 1845 after a severe parliamentary struggle. The Second 
Republic was more liberal, and the Second Empire ostentatiously 
sought the alliance of the church. The Loi Ealloux, in 1850, seemed 
to recognize the existence of male orders, and advantage was imme- 
diately taken of a vague phrase to assume their legality. At length, 
in 1852, a law was passed regulating, by a general form, the incor- 
poration of all religious societies, and under this their growth was 
amazingly rapid — none the less so, perhaps, because they were not 
even required by the authorities to observe the law and go through 
the formality of procuring authorizations. In 1827 there were but 
20,943 female devotees, while the number of males under conventual 
vows was too insignificant for computation, 2 and under the monarchy 
of July the growth was exceedingly small. In 1861 these had in- 
creased to 17,776 males and 90,343 females, and in 1877 to 22,207 
males and 127,000 females. 

In Belgium the figures are equally startling. In 1856 that little 



1 For details, see Dupin, op. cit. pp. 285-298. 

2 Chabot, Encyclopedie Monastique, p. xi. (Paris, 1827). 



SPREAD OF MONACHISM. 615 

kingdom had 2383 monks and 12,247 nuns— a total of 14,630 — an 
enormous proportion in so small a population, enabling the clergy, 
as has more than once been seen, almost to control the elections. 

To comprehend the full significance of these figures, they may be 
compared with the undisturbed monasticism of an old Catholic state 
such as Austria. That empire, in 1859, had but 10,449 monks and 
6463 nuns, or 16,912 in all. For the Catholic population alone of 
Austria, this gives one to every 1579 inhabitants, while, about the 
same period in France the proportion was one to every 346 souls, 
and in Belgium, one to every 308. 

The Company of Jesus furnishes an equally instructive illustration 
of the flourishing condition and rapid growth of monachism despite 
the shackles apparently imposed on it by modern institutions. The 
Jesuits, formally reestablished in 1814 by Pius VII. and gradually 
working an entrance into one kingdom after another, have increased 
with a rapidity which is exceedingly significant. 

Thus in 1834 the Company numbered but 2684, 
« 18 44 u a a 4 133j 

" 1854 « " » 5510, 

" 1864 " " " 7734, 

and a still later computation gives them 7949 members, divided into 
3389 priests, 2323 brother coadjutors, and 2237 novices — the large 
proportion of the latter indicating how great is the prospective in- 
crease. In France alone their number had grown from 200 in 1845 
to 1085 in 1865, and to 1509 in 1877. 

In this enormous spread of monachism, it is interesting to observe 
the change which has occurred from mediaeval sensual indulgence and 
mystic asceticism to modern utilitarianism. Thus in France, by the 
census of 1861, there were, out of 17,776 men bound by vows, 

Devoted to education, 12,845, 

Distribution of charity and care of the sick, . . . 389, 

In charge of houses of refuge and farm schools, . . 496, 

Devoted to religious contemplation, .... 4,046, 

while of 90,343 women, there were 

Devoted to education, ....... 58,883, 

Distribution of charity and care of the sick, . . . 20,292, 

In charge of houses of refuge and farm schools, . . 3,073, 

Devoted to religious contemplation, ..... 8,095. 

The large proportion of almoners and hospital nurses among the 
women is easily explicable by what has already been stated as to the 



616 



THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 



favor shown by successive governments to the Sisters of Charity, 
and the good which is effected by these organizations cannot easily 
be overrated. Who is there who can fail to do justice to these 
humble Christians, when once he has had the good fortune to witness 
their self-devotion and the benefits arising from their tireless minis- 
trations, made doubly valuable by system and special training ? In 
our own land, torn by sudden and gigantic civil war, when the sick 
and wounded had accumulated almost beyond the possibility of care, 
who that then noted the blessed agency of those angels of the hos- 
pital, would willingly pause to coldly criticise the institutions of which 
they are the most perfect development ? In a Catholic country like 
France, the opportunities for good works are of course vastly 
greater, for almost every benevolent institution naturally seeks the 
aid of the church, and that aid is willingly given, not only from 
charitable motives, but also, we may assume, on account of the 
enormous influence thence accruing among the masses of the popu- 
lation who are the beneficiaries, and this is especially felt in the 
manufacturing centres and amid the periodical crises attendant upon 
modern financial and industrial development. The creches where 
babies are kept while their mothers are at the factory are presided 
over by nuns ; the distribution of bread and soup at the Bureaux 
de Bienfaisance is made by nuns ; the neglected and wretched little 
children who are sent to the infant schools are washed and tended 
by nuns ; x and, in fact, whatever tender, or humane, or charitable 
influence reaches the proletaire in his grieving and despairing 
wretchedness, almost necessarily comes to him through some channel 
connected with a religious order. 

A much more complex question, however, is presented by the 
numbers and the activity of the orders devoted to education. While 
giving due weight to the purely benevolent impulses which lead so 
many to undertake the task of training the young, and while freely 
acknowledging the vast amount of good arising from the education, 
in so many cases gratuitous, of those who might otherwise remain 
in the darkness of ignorance, the inquirer cannot shut his eyes to 
other considerations. The eagerness with which the church seeks to 
acquire for itself the direction of the docile mind of childhood shows 
how fully it is alive to the importance of this most fruitful source of 



1 N. Y. Nation, May 29th, 1879. It 
is to the Paris correspondence of this 
journal that I am indebted for most of 



the details respecting the recent struggle 
between the religious orders and the 
state. 



EDUCATIONAL MONACHISM. 617 

influence. Previous to 1849, the educational system of France was, 
nominally at least, in the hands of the State, though even then the 
church had made large inroads upon its province. The leading in- 
strumentality in this was the congregation of the Freres des Ecoles 
Ohretiennes, founded in 1680 by the Abbe de la Salle, for the 
gratuitous instruction of the poor, and Frere Philippe, the General 
of the Order, testified in 1849 before a parliamentary committee that 
the body then consisted of 3300 members with 200,000 children 
under their care. The spread of communism among the people, as 
manifested in the overthrow of the monarchy, alarmed the conserva- 
tives, and one of the first acts of the Republic under Louis Napoleon 
was to encourage by the Loi Falloux the efforts of the church to 
extend its operations. How successful was the attempt is shown by 
a comparison of the statistics of twenty years. 

1843. 1863. 

Eeligious of both sexes engaged in primary teaching, 16,958 46,840 

Number of primary schools under their direction, . 7,590 17,206 

Number of scholars in these schools, .... 706,917 1,610,674 

Children in salles d'asile, under sisterhoods, . . 301,536 

By 1861, in the next grade of schools, the religious orders had 
55,151 male pupils, while those in the government institutions of 
similar class numbered only 63,291. In 1865 the whole number of 
children between the ages of 7 and 12 in France was 4,018,427 ; 
while, two years previous, out of 2,265,576 boys attending school, 
443,732 were in institutions conducted by the religious orders, and 
of 2,070,612 girls, no less than 1,166,942, or more than half, were 
under the care of sisterhoods. 

This enormous and rapidly increasing proportion shows how largely 
the coming generation is trained under monkish influences, and 
justifies the efforts made by the Ferry ministry, after the over- 
throw of the reactionary government of MacMahon, to check the 
growth of these schools. The religious orders are bound to a pecu- 
liar obedience to the Holy See ; all other bonds, whether of family 
or of country, are as nothing in comparison. The monk who con- 
scientiously regards his vows cannot be a citizen, or be fitted to 
train future citizens. The congregation, for instance, of the Freres 
de la Sainte- Croix is largely engaged in educating and furnishing 
teachers ; and among the secret statutes of the order is one forbid- 
ding its members to admit the existence of any opinion, whether in 



618 



THE CHUECH OF TO-DAY, 



politics, theology, or religion, contrary to the opinion of Rome. 1 
What are the political opinions of Rome may readily be found in the 
Syllabus of 1864, among its anathemas directed against freedom of 
thought and of the press, against any liberty which threatens to 
abridge the temporal power of the hierarchy or to limit its absolute 
authority, and indeed against the simplest toleration in the matter of 
religious belief. That these are in fact the principles which govern 
education in clerical schools was shown during the debates on the 
Ferry laws in 1879, by M. Ferry, who had, after some difficulty, 
procured copies of text-books used in them, and who quoted from 
them passages praising feudal rights and reviling the Revolution, 
justifying the Inquisition and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
denouncing civil marriage as concubinage, alluding to religious 
toleration as a temporary necessity, and inculcating the doctrine of 
the submission of the state to the church. It needs no argument to 
show that institutions which teach such principles as these are not 
fit to be trusted with the training of those who are to constitute a 
self-governing Republic. 

Nor was this the only evil arising from the successful efforts made 
by the church through its monastic legions to control the education 
of France. The enormous demand for recruits to fill the rapidly 
growing ranks of its army of teachers exceeded its capacity to provide 
suitable material, whether as regards mental or moral training. In 
its desire to favor the growth of clerical schools, the Second Empire 
waived in favor of the religious orders the rigorous examinations 
required of the laity as a condition precedent to employment as 
teachers. The supervision of the state being thus withdrawn, dis- 
cretion was left with those whose unworldly duties can scarcely be sup- 
posed to render them competent judges, and that discretion has been 
necessarily much abused. It is related by Mdlle. Daubie, herself 
an instructress of high reputation, that when she was eight years old 
she was applied to, by a woman employed in tending cows, to teach 
her the catechism, and within a year she was surprised to find her 
whilom pupil suddenly reappear as a sister, duly authorized to teach. 
It is computed that, among the male religious employed in teaching, 
not more than one in ten has the brevet, which would be indispensable 
to them if they were laymen ; while, of the sisters engaged in instruc- 



1 "Kegle 91. — Qu'il ne laisse entrevoir 
aucune opinion, soit politique, soit the- 
ologique ou religieuse, contraire aux 



opinions du saint-siege." — Sauvestre, 
op. cit. 215. 



EVILS OF MONASTIC EDUCATION. 619 

tion, out of 8000 superiors of institutions, only about 1000 are 
brevetees, and, of their assistants, not more than one per cent, are 
so qualified. 

If the mental qualifications of these educators were thus disre- 
garded, their moral characters were equally relieved from proper 
scrutiny ; and this, combined with the temptations inseparable from 
the celibate system, has not infrequently led to the most shocking 
results. The enormous influence of the ecclesiastical establishment, 
working upon the bureaus of the government, the officials of justice, 
and the press, was usually sufficient to prevent much public scandal 
under Louis Napoleon and Marshal MacMahon; but a list of the 
prosecutions reported in the newspapers from 1861 to April, 1879, 
collected by Dr. Wahu, 1 shows about fifty cases in which the male 
teachers had abused the children under their charge, many of these 
cases being of appalling turpitude. As eleven of these occurred 
during the first three months of 1879, it may reasonably be con- 
cluded that equal freedom on the part of the public prosecutors and 
the press during the previous eighteen years would have produced a 
vastly larger number of convictions ; and not the least deplorable 
feature of the matter is that in more than one case the culprit had 
been previously transferred several times from one institution to 
another, giving grounds for the assumption that the authorities were 
cognizant of his wickedness, and preferred to allow him to spread 
contagion throughout different communities rather than incur the 
scandal of punishing him. 

As illustrative of two phases of the subject, I may briefly refer to 
two cases from among a number which were brought to light in 1861, 
as the result of the efforts of a writer bold enough to brave the anger 
of the church, and who found a journal with the hardihood to second 
his efforts. One of these occurred at Saintes, in a school under the 
care of the Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes. Out of 300 boys, one 
hundred had been the victims of the monsters to whom they had been 
confided, and who enjoyed with a Satanic zest the corruption which 
they spread through so many households. The evil became rumored 
abroad, but no one dared to attack the members of so powerful an 
order, until an old soldier who held the post of gendarme found the 
evil in his family. Unused to prudence, he complained. The local 
board of supervision, afraid of compromising the " interests of re- 



Le Pape et la Societe Moderne, Paris, 1879, pp. 416-437. 



620 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 

ligion," endeavored to hush up the affair, but the prefect, fortunately, 
was of different temper, and took up the matter energetically. The 
guilty brethren disappeared, and their superior professed to know 
nothing about them, while the gendarme was soon afterwards dis- 
missed from his post, and the matter passed over, leaving nothing 
behind it but a hundred ruined youths and corrupted families. The 
other case is that of Frere Cleonique at Jonsac, whose offences were 
too fully proved for denial, and whose counsel on his trial could only 
urge in palliation that the responsibility rested, not on his client, 
but on the system which employed such creatures and exposed them 
to temptations beyond their strength — "Gentlemen," said he, "look 
at my client. What is he, after all ? A clown, a goitreux, almost 
a cretin ; surely less than a man ! He was herding flocks, when 
they undertook to persuade him that he had a call. A black gown 
was thrown on his shoulders, and, behold him in charge of a school ! 
Such a nature could only attempt that career through pride and sloth. 
There he is, utterly untrained, ignorant of everything in life, and yet 
charged with teaching our children how to live ! ... Do you wonder 
that one day the beast awoke in that soul, into which nothing lofty 
had been instilled ? . . . There he is before you, but who is really 
to blame; who is the criminal? Assuredly not this poor wretch, 
involved in the blindest ignorance, whom they drew from his ob- 
scurity, and to whom they taught nothing before confiding to him 
the grave responsibility of training youth." It is satisfactory to 
add that this ingenious plea was unsuccessful, and that the brute was 
sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor — but he had been seven 
years at Jonsac, and his victims counted by the hundred. 1 

It was during these prosecutions, in 1861, that Frere Philippe, 
the General of the "Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes," was stimulated 
to issue a secret circular, in which, after alluding to two previous 
ones of the same nature sent out in 1854 and 1860, he said that the 
time had come to speak plainly about the " horrible disease which 
devours the Order," and which, under the investigations then in pro- 
gress, was leading one brother after another to prison, and was sow- 
ing scandal broadcast. But the prosecutions died away, and matters 
soon resumed their usual course. It is but two or three years since 
that the Bien-Public, in comparing the morality of the lay schools 



1 Sauvestre, op. cit. pp. 123-4. 



REACTION AGAINST MONACHISM. 621 

with those in charge of the church, was able to produce these sta- 
tistics : — 

In 10,000 lay schools, 5.44 crimes and 22.29 offences (delits). 

In 10,000 church schools, 65.10 " and 90.50 " « 

Nor are these shocking cases confined to France. In 1873 a similar 
scandal was suddenly brought to light in the great Barnabite college 
at Monza, in Lombardy, where there were more than 300 students, 
many of whom were found to have been debauched by their instructors. 
The institution was promptly closed by the authorities, but the chief 
criminals, Father Stanislas Cereza, the principal, and Father Villa, 
one of his assistants, escaped, having prudently disappeared at the 
first rumors of the development. 

It was, however, political considerations rather than moral ones 
which led the French cabinet, shortly after the fall of MacMahon 
had destroyed the alliance between church and state, to commence an 
attack on the clerical schools. The measure proposed in what were 
known as the Ferry laws was certainly not a sweeping one, for the 
seventh article, on which the struggle took place, simply provided 
that "no man can be allowed to direct an establishment of public or 
private teaching, of whatever order this establishment may be, if he 
belongs to a non-authorized religious congregation;" and an official 
list of the non-authorized congregations showed them to consist merely 
of 1502 Jesuits, 327 Dominicans, 222 Marists, 230 Benedictines, 
193 Eudists, 65 Basilians, 22 Barnabites, 14 Oratorians, 91 mem- 
bers of the Congregation of St. Bertin, and 105 of the Congregation 
of the Sacre Ooeur de Jesus. The measure, in fact, was aimed rather 
at the Jesuits than at the others ; but clerical influence was as yet 
too strong, and after a discussion, which lasted for about nine months, 
this section of the law was rejected by the Senate. Jules Ferry 
accepted the defeat, but at once announced that the existing statutes 
against the Jesuits and other unauthorized orders would be enforced 
— a declaration which received the approval of the Chamber of 
Deputies. Within a fortnight, on March 31st, 1880, accordingly, 
two decrees were issued. The first of these expelled the order of the 
Jesuits from France, giving them until June 30th to dissolve, and 
allowing a further delay until August 30th for the closing of their 
schools and colleges, in order not to inconvenience the students by 
dispersing them before the usual period of vacation. The other 
decree called upon all non-authorized congregations within three 
months to take the necessary steps to obtain the verification and 



622 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 

ratification of their statutes and regulations, and the legal recog- 
nition of their establishments, and promising that when this was 
done provisions for the male congregations should be made by special 
acts, while those for female communities should be by either special 
acts or by simple decrees. The enforcement of the existing laws 
was threatened against all which should neglect within the given 
period to apply for authorization with all the prescribed details. 
Now, the laws required that the superiors of all orders should be 
residents of France, and that all congregations should submit in 
spiritual matters to the jurisdiction of the episcopal ordinaries, while, 
in fact, the more important orders have foreign superiors and are 
independent of episcopal jurisdiction. It was distasteful in the last 
degree to submit to this, and the indisposition to do so was strength- 
ened by the prospect that each congregation would come before the 
Chambers as the subject of a special debate, in which their regula- 
tions would be discussed, with very slender prospect of ultimately 
obtaining the desired permission, since a special act would confer on 
them the right to hold real-estate — a right which many members, 
even of the Catholic Right, were not prepared to grant them. 

The result of the first decree was that at the dates appointed the 
Jesuit establishments and colleges were closed, with but a faint show 
of passive resistance; but, as the members were not personally 
exiled, a large portion of them remained, and their colleges were 
continued by placing over them as nominal principals influential 
laymen under their control. 

The second decree struck at 5917 members of unauthorized con- 
gregations. Its execution was postponed in hopes that the bodies 
thus threatened would endeavor to comply with the law, but the only 
concession they were willing to make was by putting forth a declara- 
tion containing a public act of submission to the constitution and a 
resolution to take no part whatever in public or political matters. 
At last, in November, 1880, the government found itself obliged to 
employ force, and the establishments were closed by the police, aided 
where necessary by the military. A general system of passive re- 
sistance had been organized ; doors had to be violently broken open, 
and the inmates carried out through jeering or sympathizing crowds. 
The popular feeling, in fact, had been worked upon as far as possible, 
and at some places, as at Lyons, civil conflict seemed for a moment 
to be imminent, while at Turquoing (Nord) even blood was shed; 
but on the whole the crisis passed away with much less disturbance 



SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION". 623 

than had been anticipated. Since then the growing strength of re- 
publicanism throughout France, unimpeded by clerical and reaction- 
ary efforts, shows how much slighter a hold the religious orders had 
on the popular mind than had been supposed, and how mistaken had 
been Napoleon III. in regarding an alliance with the church as a 
necessity for the preservation of his dynasty. In fact, there has 
been no banishment of individuals nor expropriation of property. 
Though the unauthorized congregations have been dissolved, in 
accordance with laws which date back to the Ancien Regime, the 
members retain their property, enjoy all the rights of citizenship, 
and can perform Mass in the churches near their convents — indeed, 
the aristocracy, which naturally affiliates with them, has rather made 
a point of offering them ostentatious hospitality. 

The effort to separate education from clericalism still continues. 
The execution of the decrees was accompanied by the adoption of 
laws establishing government colleges for women and providing free 
primary education, and, March 24th, 1882, there was passed an act 
rendering education compulsory. For nearly nine months there had 
been hot debate between the Deputies and the Senators over an 
amendment of Jules Simon's, that instruction should be given in 
the public schools on the duties of the pupils "towards God and 
towards their country," but the elections of January, 1882, deprived 
the clericals of their power, the Senate receded from the amendment, 
and the education provided for by the act is to be purely secular. 

It may safely be assumed that France will not abandon the insti- 
tutions thus established to attacks by the priesthood such as the 
Belgian clergy habitually make upon the public schools of that king- 
dom. In a parliamentary debate, February 22, 1881, on this sub- 
ject, it was stated, without contradiction, that the cures were in the 
habit of refusing communion not only to the children who attend 
these schools, but also to their parents and grandparents, uncles, and 
aunts — in fact, admission to communion under the circumstances is 
the exception and refusal is the rule. Even threats are made to 
withhold baptism from future infants, the sacrament is denied to 
dying parents, and wives are urged to withdraw from all sexual rela- 
tions with their husbands. When spiritual weapons are insufficient, 
more carnal means are employed by efforts to ruin the business of 
the disobedient by a system of "Boycotting," which is sometimes 
successful ; and the enthusiastic cure of Virginal admitted that he 
had pronounced it to be a less offence to commit murder than to 



624 



THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 



vote for a Liberal, because Liberalism is heresy. 1 When such is the 
spirit of the church at the present day, French republicanism may 
be pardoned for desiring to limit its control over popular education. 



It only remains for us to consider what is the present effect of 
celibacy on the moral condition of the church, and whether it has 
succeeded, after fifteen centuries of fruitless effort, in at last obtain- 
ing a priesthood whose chastity is more than nominal. At the 
commencement of the struggle, the great apostle of asceticism, St. 
Jerome, calmed the fears of those who dreaded a diminution of popu- 
lation from the spread of vows of continence, by assuring them that 
few would be found to persevere to the end in a task so difficult as 
the maintenance of virginity. 2 Has, then, human nature changed 
during the interval, and has the church been justified in its. assertion 
at the council of Trent that God would not withhold the gift of 
chastity from those who rightly seek it, or permit us to be tempted 
beyond our strength ? 3 It is certainly not so easy to answer this 
question now, as we have seen it in former ages, when men were 
more plain-spoken and less decent, when offences against morality 
were committed more openly, and when they were denounced both 
by the church and its enemies with a distinctness of utterance unfit 
for modern ears. Yet it is not impossible to find some evidence 
bearing on the question which may enable the impartial inquirer to 
arrive at a conclusion. 

The church is unquestionably violating the precept " Thou shalt 
not tempt the Lord thy God " when, in its reliance that the gift 
of chastity will accompany ordination, it confers the sub-diaconate 
at the age of 22 and the priesthood at 25 4 — or even earlier 
by special dispensation — and then turns loose young men, at the age 
when the passions are the strongest, trained in the seminary and 
unused to female companionship, to occupy a position in which they 
are brought into the closest and most dangerous relations with women 



1 K T. Nation, April 21st, 1881. 

2 Noli metuere ne omnes virgines 
fiant; difficilis res est virginitas, et ideo 
rara quia difficilis. Incipere plurimo- 
rum est, perseverare paucorum. — Hie- 
ron. adv. Jovin. I. 36. 

3 Concil Trident. Sess. xxiv. De 
Sacrament. Matrim. c. ix. 

* Concil. Trident. Sess. xxm. De 



Keform. c. xii. The Abbe Chavard 
relates (Le Celibat des Pretres, p. 269) 
that he once asked the directors of a 
seminary whether the age for assuming 
the burdens of the priesthood ought 
not to be postponed to the fortieth year, 
and he was told that the church must 
have priests and that there were few 
indeed who would submit to its con- 
ditions after the age of illusions was 
passed. 



CLEEICAL MOKALITY. 



625 



who regard them as beings gifted with supernatural powers and 
holding in their hands the keys of heaven and hell. Whatever may- 
have been the ardor with which the vows were taken, the youth thus 
exposed to temptations hitherto unknown, finds his virtue rudely 
assailed when in the confessional female lips repeat to him the story 
of sins and transgressions, and he recognizes in himself instincts and 
passions which are only the stronger by reason of their whilom repres- 
sion. That a youthful spiritual director, before whom are thrown 
down all the barriers with which the prudent reserve of society sur- 
rounds the social intercourse of the sexes, should too often find that 
he has over-estimated his self-control, is more than probable. 

This, of course, is merely a 'priori reasoning, and of itself proves 
nothing, except the extreme imprudence of a system which applies 
fire to straw and assumes that combustion will not follow. Doubtless 
there are cases in which the assumption is justified by the result — 
whole countries, indeed, where scandals are few. In Ireland, for 
instance, we rarely hear of immoral priests, though such cases would 
be relentlessly exposed by the interests adverse to Catholicism, and 
the proverbial chastity of the Irish women may be both a cause and 
a consequence of this. In the United States, also, troubles of the 
kind only come occasionally to public view; but here, again, the 
church is surrounded by antagonistic churches, the laborers are 
few and hardly worked, and the position is not one to attract those 
who might seek a life of sloth and indulgence. At the same time, 
it must be borne in mind that the extreme care with which the 
church avoids scandal renders it impossible for one not within the 
pale to ascertain what may really be the relations between ecclesi- 
astics and the female servants whom, as we shall see, they are per- 
mitted to keep in their houses. 

In lands where Catholicism is dominant I fear that there can be 
little doubt as to this, although Ernest Renan, a witness of unques- 
tionable impartiality, whose clerical training gave him every oppor- 
tunity of observation, declares emphatically that he has known no 
priests but good priests, and that he has never seen even the shadow 
of a scandal. 1 In spite of the Nicsean canon, on which the rule of 



1 Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeu- 
nesse, Paris, 1883, p. 139. " Le fait 
est que ce qu 'on dit des mceurs cleri- 
cales est, selon mon experience, denue 
de tout fondement. J'ai passe treize 
ans de ma vie entre les mains des 



pretres, je n'ai pas vu 1'ombre d'un 
scandale; je n'ai connu que de bons 
pretres. La confession peut avoir, 
dans certains paj's, de graves incon- 
venients. Je n'en ai pas vu une trace 
dans mon jeunesse ecclesiastique." 



40 



626 



THE CHUECH OF TO-DAY. 



celibacy has virtually rested, the church, after a struggle of more 
than a thousand years, was forced to admit the " subintroducta 
mulier" as an inmate of the priest's domicile. The order of Nature 
on this point refused so obstinately to be set aside, that the Council 
of Trent finally recognized women as a necessary evil, and only 
sought to regulate the necessity by forbidding those in holy orders 
from keeping in their houses or maintaining any relations with con- 
cubines or women liable to suspicion. 1 It is true that the severe 
virtue of St. Charles Borromeo refused to grant to a septuagenary 
priest a license for more than a year for the residence of a sister 
equally aged, and forced him to apply annually for its renewal ; it is 
also true that the council of Rome, in 1725, allowed the residence 
of women only within the first and second degrees of kindred; 2 but 
in modern times the Tridentine canon has been interpreted as allow- 
ing the residence of female servants or house-keepers, in view of the 
hardship of doing without domestics and the expense of employing 
men. In order to meet the Tridentine caution to avoid suspicion, 
efforts have sometimes been made to define a minimum "canonical" 
age for these women, varying from thirty to fifty years, but usually 
placed at forty — a palliative which, as might be expected, accom- 
plishes little, even when, as is not always the case, the rule is 
observed more scrupulously than by the device of dividing the 
canonical age and keeping two girls of twenty. 55 



1 Concil. Trident. Sess. xxv. De 
Keform. cap. xiv. 

3 Convent. Episcc. Mediolanenss. ann. 
1849 Sess. in. No. 18 (Collect. Lacens. 
VI. 717). — Concil. Roman, ann. 1725 
Tit. xvi. c. Hi. (lb. I. 372). 

3 For the varying legislation on this 
subject the reader may refer to C. Bene- 
ventan. ann. 1693 Tit. xvin. c. iii. 
(Collect. Lacens. I. 44). — Synod. Ba- 
hiens. ann. 1707 Lib. in. (I. 854).— 
C. Tarracon. ann. 1717 c. xxxi. (I. 
779). — C. Avenionens. ann. 1725 Tit. 
xxxvn. c iii. (I. 554). — Synod. Fir- 
manens. ann. 1726 Tit. ix. (I. 599).— 
C. Ebredunens. ann. 1727 c. v. No. 5 
(I. 626). — Synod. Nat. Hungar. ann. 
1822 De Discip. renov. 3 (V. 940).— 
C. Baltimor. IV. ann. 1840 Deer. x. 
(III. 72).— Conv. Episcc. Mediolan. 
ann. 1849 Sess. in. No. 18 (VI. 717). 
— C. Turon. ann. 1849 Deer. xi. i. 
(IV. 268-9).— C. Avenionens. ann. 1849 
Tit. vi. c. v. No. 16 (IV. 348).— C. 



Remens. ann. 1849 Tit. xn. c. ii. (IV. 
129).— C. Albiens. ann. 1850 Tit. I. Deer, 
v. No. 1 (IV. 411).— C. Burdigal. ann. 
1850 T. iv. c. xii. No. 3 (IV. 588).— C. 
Bituricens. ann. 1850 Tit.vi. (IV 1122). 
— C. Tolosan. ann. 1850 Tit. iv. c. iv. 
No. 126 (IV. 1069).— C. Senonens. 
ann. 1850 Tit. iv. c. iv. (IV. 904).— 
C. Aquens. ann. 1850 Tit. v. \ 2. c. ix. 
No. 1 (IV. 985).— O. Rothomag. ann. 
1850 Deer. xi. No. 3-5 (IV. 525)— C. 
Lugdunens. ann. 1850 Deer. xvin. 
No. 1-3 (IV. 475).— Synod. Thurlesi- 
ens. ann. 1850 Deer. xvn. No. 14 (III. 
785). — Conv. Epp. Lauretan. ann. 1850 
Sect. i. v. (VI. 778).— Conv. Epp. Si- 
cilige Tit n. c. i. No. 9 (VI. 815).— 
C. Auscitan. ann. 1851 Tit. iv. c. i. 
No. 147 (IV. 1200).— C. Quebecens. I. 
ann. 1851 Deer. xiv. (III. 615).— C. 
Westmonasteriens. I. ann. 1852 Deer, 
xxiv. No. 4 (III. 939).— C. Quebecens. 
II. ann. 1854 Deer. xiv. No. 20 (III. 
652). — C. Armacens. ann. 1854 Deer. 
xxni. (III. 852). — C. Portus Hispaniae 



KESIDENCE OF WOMEN. 



627 



Few priests, it may be assumed, have the self-denial to live with- 
out this female companionship, which is permitted by the church as 
a matter of course. Indeed, the census-paper officially filled in at 
the Vatican and returned in January, 1882, stated the population 
of the palace to be 500, of which one-third were women. While, of 
course, it does not follow that the relations between these women 
and the grave dignitaries of the papal court may not be perfectly 
virtuous, still, considering the age at which ordination is permitted, 
it would be expecting too much of human nature to believe that, in 
at least a large number of cases among parish priests, the compan- 
ionship is not as fertile of sin as we have seen it to be in every 
previous age since the ecclesiastic has been deprived of the natural 
institution of marriage. The " niece " or other female inmate of 
the parsonage throughout Catholic Europe still excites the smile 
of the heretic traveller, and is looked upon as a matter of course 
by the parishioner, while the prelates, content if open scandal be 
avoided, affect to regard the arrangement as harmless, knowing that 
it serves as a preventive of more flagrant and more public trouble, 
though the fact that this companionship is made the subject of dis- 
cussion and regulation at virtually every council or synod or epis- 
copal convention held by the church shows that privately it is recog- 
nized as a necessary evil at best. Yet the old sophistry is not 
forgotten, which proves that such sin is less than the infraction of 
ecclesiastical laws. In a tract in favor of celibacy, published at 
Warsaw in 1801, with the extravagant laudation of the authorities, 
argument is gravely made that as priestly marriage is incestuous, 
such adultery is vastly worse than simple licentiousness, the latter 
being only a lapse of the flesh, while marriage would be schism and 
arrogant disobedience, involving sin of a far deeper dye. 1 

It would, of course, be vain to expect, at the present day, from 
the rulers of the church, the outspoken candor of the Middle Ages, 



ann. 1854 Sect. II. No. 5 (III. 1100-1). 
— O. Kavennat. ann. 1855 P. iv. c. iv. 
No. 3 (VI. 198).— C. Scti. Ludovici II. 
ann. 1858 Deer. vn. (III. 318).— O. 
Viennens. ann. 1858 Tit. v. c. vi. (V. 
197).— 0. Strigonens. ann. 1858 Tit. 
VI. No. 9 (V. 53).— C. Venetic. ann. 
1859 P. ii. c. xvii. No. 10-11 (VI. 
317).— 0. Urbinatens. ann. 1859 P. II. 
Tit. vii. No. 148 (VI. 51).— C. Pragens. 
ann. 1860 Tit. I. c. vi. No. 1 (V. 426). 
— C. Coloniens. ann. 1860 Tit. II. c. 



xxxiv., xxxviii. (V. 378-80).— C. Cin- 
cinnatiens. III. ann. 1861 Deer. ix. 
(III. 226).— C. Coloniens. ann. 1863 
Tit. iv. c. iv. (V. 670;. — C. Quitens. 
ann. 1869 Deer. iv. No. 2 (VI. 403). 
— C. Ultrajectens. ann. 1865 Tit. viii. 
c. iv. (V. 905).— C. PI. Baltimor. II. 
ann. 1866 Tit ill. c. vi. No. 164 (III. 
446).— C. Halifaxiens. ann. 1868 Deer. 
xviii. (III. 751). 

1 De Sacerdotum Coelibatu Doctrina 
Varsovise, 1801 pp. 62-3. 



628 



THE CHUECH OF TO-DAY. 



when evils were denounced openly and in the coarsest terms. In 
those days councils could speak, because none but those connected 
with the church were likely to be cognizant of their proceedings ; 
while, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the immorality of ecclesiastics 
was so notorious that no harm could arise from admitting it in the 
efforts made for its correction. In modern times, however, when an 
external veil of decency is to be maintained before the eyes of an- 
tagonistic critics, when scandal is, of all things, to be avoided, and 
when the proceedings of ecclesiastical bodies are carefully revised at 
Rome, before they are allowed to become public, with the conscious- 
ness that they may be spread by the press before a world of hostile 
mockers, ready to jeer at the woes of the church, only the most 
guarded allusions can be made to such subjects, and these only when 
the case is urgent. When, therefore, we see that almost every council 
held in modern times has deemed it necessary to insist on the supreme 
importance of preserving chastity — lying, swearing, stealing, and 
other sins not being even alluded to ; when the caution against undue 
familiarity with women, even devotees, is constantly urged; and 
when the relations between the priest and his servant are frequently 
indicated by directions that he must not admit her to companionship 
at the table, or on walks and journeys, and especially not in visiting 
fairs and merrymakings, it would be difficult not to recognize under 
this guarded phraseology an admission of the actual relationship 
existing between the good pastors and their female inmates, and a 
friendly warning, si non caste saltern caute. 1 

It is not often that we can obtain an inside view of these matters, 
especially from a source that is at once well informed and not hostile, 
but such a view, confirming the worst suspicions, is afforded by an 
indignant remonstrance addressed, in 1832, to Monseigneur Sterckx, 
Archbishop of Mechlin, by the Abbe Helsen, who for twenty-five 
years had been a popular preacher in Brussels. 2 The abbe calls 
upon his prelate to enforce the Tridentine canon by banishing the 
women who are universally inmates of the houses of priests, and 
thus put a stop to the sin and the scandal which destroy the influence 
of the church and spread immorality among the faithful. Even the 



1 See previous note for warnings of 
this kind. The council of Ausch, in 
1851, even ventures to allude to the 
grave inconveniences which may arise 
from the residence of a sister or aunt, 
if young, and if there is not also 



the mother or a female servant in the 
house. 

2 Helsen, Avis a l'Archeveque de 
Malines, Monseigneur Sterckx, sur les 
abus du Celibat des Pretres, 4to. Brux- 
elles, 1833. 



THE LAITY DEMORALIZED BY THE CLERGY. 629 

bishops and dignitaries of the church are not spared, and the arch- 
bishop himself is summoned to dismiss the "Petronilla" who had 
accompanied him from the curacy of Bouchout to the cathedral of 
Antwerp, and from Antwerp to the metropolitan seat of Mechlin. 1 
Throughout this plain-spoken epistle the author assumes as a matter 
of course not only that the relations between the clergy and their 
servants are guilty, but that they are so recognized by every one — 
so notorious, indeed, as to need no proof — and, as a natural conse- 
quence, he regards the priesthood as a source of infection destructive 
to public morals. The cure is to be found in putting a stop to these 
irregular unions — " If women were forever banished from the houses 
of ecclesiastics vowed to celibacy, I think we should not see so great 
a number of prostitutes who ply their trade at night in our great 
cities, nor so many illegitimate children who curse their destiny as 
they multiply more and more around us. We ridicule the Seraglio 
of the Grand Turk and the polygamy of the Moslem, but they too, 
on their side, ridicule the infinite number of strumpets with whom 
Christian Europe is deluged, and the custom of keeping as many 
concubines as can be afforded. Whence comes to us this shameful 
trade, so hurtful to society, which is found under our religion more 
than under any other ? We dare not doubt that it is the result of 
our own misconduct ; we dare not accuse only the heretics and the 
philosophers of modern times ; no, no ! the most poisonous spring is 
in us, among us, with us, and it will not dry up without us. Let 
us blush to our eye-balls ; let us hide ourselves from public sight ! 
Oh for the times and the virtues of the primitive church ! Why 
come ye not again ?" 2 That this sort of scarcely veiled concubinage 
is, in fact, a fruitful source of prostitution can scarcely be doubted 
if, as Helsen asserts, the ordinary custom is, when one of these 
priest's servants becomes pregnant and cannot be saved by a prudent 
absence, to dismiss her and take another, perhaps younger and more 
attractive ; and that this may occur repeatedly without the ecclesi- 
astic being subjected to any special annoyance or supervision — unless, 
indeed, he is so ill-advised as to take pity on the unfortunate girl and 
refuse to send her away. In that case he becomes a public concubi- 
narian, liable to the canonical penalties, with which he is sometimes 
disciplined. As Helsen indignantly exclaims, " Would the Mahom- 
etans tolerate such infamy in their fakirs and dervishes ? The Japa- 



1 Helsen, pp. 19-20. 2 Ibid. pp. 74-5. 



630 



THE CHUKCH OF TO-DAY. 



nese, the Chinese, the Hindus in their bonzes ? The pagans in their 
Vestals ? Our ancestors in their Druids ? Even the Jews and Prot- 
estants have blushed for it, since they advise their Rabbis and min- 
isters to marry rather than thus to contaminate themselves." x Helsen 
does not fail to allude to the public familiarity of these servants with 
their employers — the familiarity condemned in almost the same words 
by many of the councils cited above — and it would seem the extreme 
of Pyrrhonism to doubt that almost universal concubinage is toler- 
ated, even where on the surface there are no public scandals to attract 
the attention of the malicious. 

Testimony of the same nature exists as to Italy, where the up- 
heaval of the last quarter of a century has created discussion and 
brought forth statements of facts and opinions which reveal to some 
extent the internal condition of the church. That immorality should 
be prevalent would seem to be inevitable, if only from the overgrown 
number of the clergy, which has been fostered by the ambition of 
the church. In Rome itself, by the census of July 1st, 1867, there 
were no less than 7404 ecclesiastics of both sexes, in a population of 
215,573, or one to every 29 inhabitants of all ages. In the Pon- 
tifical States, prior to their absorption by the Kingdom of Italy, the 
proportion was one to every 55 of the population. In Northern 
Italy, embracing the Pontificate, the Duchies, Lombardo-Venetia and 
Piedmont, there was one to every 140 ; while in the whole of Italy, 
exclusive of the Pontificate, in 24,231,860 souls there were 174,001 
ecclesiastics, showing a proportion of one to 239. These numbers 
are so wholly beyond the spiritual needs of the people that it is 
evident that an ecclesiastical career must be sought by thousands 
who have no vocation for a life of abstinence and self-denial ; while 
even among those who are induced in the fervor of youth to bind 
themselves by the irrevocable vow of chastity, there must be other 
thousands who find too late that they have over-estimated their 
strength. That passions thus denied their appropriate relief in the 
institution of marriage should degenerate often into brutal license, is 
too natural to excite special wonder. 2 



i Helsen, pp. 13, 16, 18, 100. 

2 The comparative strength of the 
ecclesiastical militia is an important 
element in considering the condition of 
the church and its influence on the 
laity. I have already quoted statistics 
with regard to France, Belgium, and 



Austria, and will here append those 
for some of the other states and cities of 
Europe as given by Prof, von Schulte 
in his work on the Newer Catholic 
Orders (N. Y. Nation, Aug. 1st, 1872, 
p. 75). 

Prussia, one ecclesiastic for every 584 
Catholics, of all ages. 



THE ITALIAN CLEKGY, 



631 



It would be difficult to restrain the appetites of so vast a body as 
this even with the most determined vigilance on the part of prelates 
and in the presence of the sternest popular feeling, but both of these 
elements of repression may safely be assumed to be lacking. The 
scandal of the Countess Lambertini, whose suit for a share of the 
estate of her father, Cardinal Antonelli, has for ten years been before 
the Roman courts, would seem to show that even the virtues of 
Pius IX. were powerless to eradicate the license which has been tra- 
ditional in the papal court ; and when a theological manual, which is 
still largely used as a text-book in Catholic seminaries, coolly states 
that in Italy lust is not regarded as disgraceful, 1 though we may hope 
that the standard of morality has improved since it was written, yet 
we cannot expect to find in the people of which such a statement 
could be made, the virtue that would hold to strict account a priest- 
hood whose example has been one of the efficient means of its degra- 
dation. That there is no restraining influence would in fact appear 
from the consensus of opinion of all who have had an opportunity 
of forming a judgment. 

An address purporting to emanate from sixteen bishops to Cardinal 
Catarini, begging for an enlargement of the questions to be discussed 
in the Vatican Council, assumes the rule of celibacy to be the cause, 
not only of heresy and schism, but of scandal to the people and of 
disgrace to the church. It speaks of the disgusting trials which are 
perpetually coming before the tribunals, making the priestly garb a 
source of shame to its wearers, and leading the people to regard 
them, not as the flower of the soldiers of Christ, but as a colony 
sprung from Sodom. 2 The Archbishop of Tarento, Giuseppe Cape- 
celatro, has had no scruple in urging the abrogation of the canon in 
order to reduce the immense number of bastards whose existence 
disgraces the church. 3 In a similar mood, D. Marco Petronio, a 
priest of Pirano, in Istria, declares that the boasted chastity of the 



Bavaria, one for every 300 Catholics. 

Germany at large, one for every 481, 

Aix-la-Chapelle, one for every 110. 

Cologne, one for every 313. 

Miinster, ono for every 61. 

Treves, one for every 56. 

Paderborn , one for every 33. 

In the old Kingdom of Naples, by 
the census of 1842, there were 55,167 
ecclesiastics in a population of 6,145,492, 
making a proportion of one to 112 



(Penka, Uberior Coelibatus Sacerdo- 
talis Expositio, Cracovise, 1846). 

1 In Italia libido non est probrosa. — 
P. Dens Theolog. No. 100 de jure et 
justitia. (ap. Helsen, p. 10). Dens died 
in 1775. 



2 L'Esaminatore, 
temb. 1867. 



Firenze, 15 Set- 



3 Prota, Matrimonio Civile, ISTapoli, 
1864, p. 44. 



632 



THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY 



priesthood has filled the church with demons in place of angels, who 
lead their flocks to ruin by their acts and example, 1 and Panzini 
describes the church as a brothel filled with men ruined by the 
attempt to deprive them of marriage. When the latter, indeed, was 
on his trial before the Inquisition, he asserted that in consequence of 
the canon, there were daily committed in Rome itself more than 
twenty thousand mortal sins, and the advocate of the Holy Office, 
D. Giuseppe Cipriani, contented himself with quietly responding, 
"Perhaps not so many." 2 We may therefore feel confident that 
there is no exaggeration in the remarks of the Rev. William Chauncy 
Langdon, who had ample opportunities of observation during his long 
residence in Italy as agent of the American Episcopal Church — " I 
learned to regard a priest, who had lived all his mature life, openly 
and faithfully with a woman to whom he had not of course been 
married ; by whom he had children now grown up, and for all of 
whom he was faithfully providing — with a relative respect as one who 
had greatly risen above the morality of his church, and of the 
society around him, and whose life really might be considered, on 
the dark moral background behind him, a source of relative light." 3 

We have here an example of the tolerated concubinage which Helsen 
describes as universal under the interpretation put upon the Triden- 
tine canons. It would seem that it ought to be in some degree a 
safeguard against worse offences and more public scandals, as a kind 
of substitute for marriage ; but unlawful indulgence weakens the 
power of resistance to temptation and hardens the conscience to sin. 
In spite, therefore, of this practical relaxation of the canons, we see 
the old troubles of the relations between spiritual directors and their 
fair penitents continue to vex the pious. As we have seen with the 
less delicate matter of the female companions of the clergy, the 
councils of modern times are not likely to be outspoken with regard 
to such a subject, but the frequency with which they reiterate com- 
mands that the confessions of women shall not be heard, save in case 
of infirmity, except in church ; that when heard elsewhere it shall 
always be with open doors, and that in church the confessional shall 
be in a spot publicly visible, with a grating between the confessor 
and his penitent; that before and after sunset the lamps shall always 
be lighted, with other similar precautions, shows that the risk is fully 



1 L'Esaminatore, 15 Ott. 1867. 

2 Panzini, Pubblica Confessione, pp. 
101,357. 



3 Report to the Italian Committee of 
the American Episcopal Church (The 
Episcopalian, Phila., Sept. 11th, 1867) 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 



633 



recognized and requires constant watchfulness. 1 Helsen, in fact, 
alludes to the scandals of the confessional as a cause of its avoidance 
by the faithful and as contributing powerfully to the growth of 
religious indifference ; 2 and that these scandals exist is not a mere 
matter of conjecture or inference. If it were so, there would be no 
need for reiterating the prohibitions against the absolution by con- 
fessors of their fair partners in guilt, which is still occasionally found 
to be necessary by modern councils ; 3 nor would Pius IX. in 1866 
have felt himself obliged to declare that the power granted to bishops 
to absolve in cases reserved to the Pope shall not in future extend to 
offences reserved for papal absolution by Benedict XIV. 's Bull 
" Sacramentum Pcenitentise." In fact, the crime of "solicitation" 
must have become notoriously frequent before the Congregation of 
the Inquisition of Rome could have felt impelled, in 1867, to put 
forth an Instruction addressed to all archbishops, bishops, and ordi- 
naries, complaining that the constitutions on the subject did not 
receive proper attention, and that in some places abuses had crept 
in, both as to requiring penitents to denounce guilty confessors, and 
as to the punishing of confessors guilty of solicitation. It therefore 
urged the officials everywhere to greater vigor in investigating such 
offences and gave a summary of the practice of the Inquisition in 
regard to these matters, supervision over which, it will be remem- 
bered, was confided to the Holy Office by the Bulls of Pius IV. and 
Gregory XYI. From this it appears that when such a denunciation 
is received, it is the custom of the Inquisition to order the accused 
to be watched, and not to prosecute him unless he is the subject of 
three separate accusations. When this number has been reached, a 
special court is convened whose business it is to examine whether 
there may not be some special enmity on the part of the accusers. 



1 C. Baltimor. I. aim. 1829 Deer. 
xxv. (Collect. Lacens. III. 30-1).— 
C. Baltimor. V. aim. 1843 Deer. ix. 
(III. 90). — C. Australiens. I. arm. 
1844 Deer. xn. (III. 1051).— C. Thur- 
lesens. arm. 1850 Deer. xn. 41 (III. 
782). — C. Rothomagens. arm. 1850 
Deer. xvn. 3 (IY. 530).— C. Tolosan. 
arm. 1850 Tit. in. c. i. No. 70 (1Y. 
1054).— C. Casseliens. arm. 1853 Tit. 
in. (III. 837).— C. Tuamens. arm. 
1854 Deer, vin (III. 860).— C. Que- 
becens. II. aim. 1854 Deer. ix. § 7 
(III. 639).— C. Port. Hispanise aim. 
1854 Art. iv. No. 1, 2 (III. 1098).— 
C. Halifaxiens. I. arm. 1857 Deer. xiv. 



(III. 745).— C. Viennens. aim. 1858 
Tit. in. c. vii. (Y. 169).— C. Coloniens. 
aim. 1860 Tit. n. c. xv. (Y. 351).— C. 
Pragens. aim. 1860 Tit. iv. c. vii. ; Tit. 
v. c. viii. (Y. 508, 543).— Synod. Ultra- 
ject. arm. 1865 Tit. iv. c. viii. (Y. 
830).— C. Plen. Baltimor. II. aim. 
1866 App. X. (III. 553). 

2 Helsen, Abus du Celibat, p. 85. 

3 C. Tuamens. ann. 1817 Deer. xvn. 
(Collect. Lacens. III. 765).— C. Aus- 
traliens. I. ann. 1844 Deer. xn. (III. 
1052-3).— C. Remens. ann. 1857 c. vi. 
No. 27 (IY. 211). 



634 



THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 



Failing this, the accused is then examined under oath, care being 
taken not to reveal the names of the accusers nor to violate the seal 
of the confessional. If the transgressor confesses or is convicted, he 
is deprived forever of the faculty of hearing confessions and must 
abjure the heresy implied in his crime ; but the severer punishments 
decreed by Gregory XV. of degradation from holy orders and de- 
livery to the secular arm are not to be inflicted. Those who volun- 
tarily confess without being denounced, even though they may 
subsequently be denounced, are allowed to escape with a suitable 
penance and are ordered merely not to hear subsequently the con- 
fessions of those whom they have solicited ; confession after denun- 
ciation, but before trial, also diminishes the penalty. The utmost 
secrecy is enjoined on all concerned, who are to be sworn to silence, 
and so great a stress is laid on this that even priests are required to 
take the oath on the Gospels. The accuser is not to be asked whether 
she consented to the solicitation, and if she voluntarily makes such 
a statement it is not to be entered in the proceedings of the case. 
After the trial is finished, moreover, the whole is to be consigned to 
oblivion. 1 In view of this nervous anxiety for secrecy, and the 
tenderness manifested throughout to the offender, it is surely not 
uncharitable to conclude that scandal is more feared than sin in these 
matters. 

Possibly the abuses of the confessional may be less frequent now 
than they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet it is 
evident that they are still quite prevalent enough to require a much 
more efficient system of repression than they are at all likely to 
receive. It is true that the questions put to the penitent by the con- 
fessor are divested of the extremity of brutal coarseness prescribed 
by Bishop Burckhardt, but they are still sufficiently suggestive to 
be revolting to the pure-minded, and dangerous in no small degree 
to those who are likely to lapse. 2 

What in reality is the extent of these abuses can only be a subject 
of conjecture. Their very nature causes them to be scrupulously 



1 Instruct. S. Inquisit. Roman. Feb. 
20, 1867, No. 7, 11-14 (Collect. 
Lacens. III. 553-6). 

2 For an extract from a modern 
manual of the confessional "de agendi 
ratione confessarii erga conjugates et 
conjugendos," see Bouvet, De la Con- 
fession et du Celibat des Pretres, Paris, 



1845, pp. 290-6. It will be remem- 
bered what excitement was aroused in 
the British House of Commons a few 
years since, when a member produced 
and read a very much less objectionable 
form prepared for use by "Anglican 
priests." 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 635 

concealed not only by the principals, but by those who may inci- 
dentally find themselves wronged, and the church itself exerts all 
its influence to shield the guilty and suppress the scandal. How 
powerfully and how unscrupulously its influence is exerted to this 
end may be judged from a few examples. In 1817, at Availles, in 
France, the sacristan complained to the mayor that his daughter was 
received every night by the cure, to the scandal of the people. The 
mayor thus invited entered the priest's house suddenly one night 
and found the girl in dishabille, hidden in a corner. He drew up 
an official statement of the facts and forwarded it to the authorities, 
and the response to this was his summary dismissal from office on 
the ground of having violated the domicil of the cure and increased 
the scandal. 1 More recent than this is the notorious case of the 
Abbe Mingrat, who while cure of Saint-Opre, near Grenoble, got 
into trouble by seducing one of his penitents, but was saved from 
prosecution and transferred to Saint-Quentin. Here he established 
relations with a devout young married woman, which ended in his 
cutting her in pieces with his pocket-knife and throwing the frag- 
ments into the river Isere. Even yet no action would have been 
taken had not the mayor of the place insisted, but Mingrat was 
enabled to escape to Savoy, where he was provided for as a perse- 
cuted saint. 2 Similarly, in 1877, the Abbe Debra, condemned at 
Liege in default, for no less than thirty-two offences, was, after 
proper seclusion in a convent, given a parish in Luxembourg by the 
Bishop of Namur. 3 In the case of the Abbe Mallet, which occurred 
in 1861, the church was unable to save the culprit from punishment, 
but did what it could to conceal his crimes from the faithful. As a 
canon of Cambray, he seduced three young Jewish girls and procured 
their confinement in convents under pretext of laboring for their 
conversion. One of his victims lost her reason in consequence of 
her sufferings, and the court of Douay condemned him to six years 
at hard labor — a sentence which was announced by an orthodox 
journal thus — " M. le chanoine Mallet de Cambrai, accuse de de- 
tournement de mineurs pour cause de proselytisme religieux a ete 
condamne 4 six ans de reclusion" — where the skilful use of the 
masculine "mineurs" and the characterization of his offence as 



1 Bouvet, p. 516. 

2 Lasteyrie, Hist, of Auricular Confession, II. 38-45. 

3 Wahu, op. cit. p. 423. 



636 



THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 



religious proselytism elevate the worst of criminals into a martyr 
for the faith. 1 It is quite within the bounds of probability that, as 
such a martyr, he may, since the expiration of his sentence, have 
been enjoying, in some cure of souls, the opportunity of repeating 
his missionary experiments. 

It is evident from these various causes that the criminal records 
can give only the barest suggestion as to the extent of crimes thus 
committed in secret by a class shielded by influences so powerful. 
The records of the ministere de la justice, moreover, are not in 
France open to the public, and the only mode of obtaining even an 
approximate idea of the number of prosecutions in these cases is to 
gather them from the journals in which they chance to appear as 
items of news. An attempt to effect this has been made by Dr. 
Wahu, and though, from the nature of the case, necessarily imperfect, 
it affords some interesting and suggestive statistics. His list extends 
from the beginning of 1861 to April, 1879, and is thus tabulated : — 



1861 . 


. 3 


cases. 


1872 


. 10 cases 


1862 . 


. 2 


it 


1873 


. 6 " 


1863 . 


. 1 


a 


1875 


. 5 " 


1864 . 


. 1 


u 


1876 


. 1 " 


1866 . 


. 2 


it 


1877 


. 16 » 


1867 . 


. 3 


(i 


1878 


. 35 " 


1868 . 


. 3 


it 


1879 


(Jan. to April) 19 " 


1869 . 


. 3 


n 







In all 110 cases, of which nearly one-half were brethren connected 
with educational institutions, referred to above. 

The earlier years of this list must be necessarily imperfect, and, 
indeed, M. Charles Sauvestre has given details of nine cases occur- 
ring in schools in 1861, 2 all which have escaped Dr. Wahu, but, 
even making allowance for the impossibility of hunting up all the 
fugitive records of the past, the increase during recent years is not 
to be regarded as indicating an increase of immorality. It rather 



1 Sauvestre, op. cit. p. 144. It is by 
this policy that the church renders itself 
responsible for the evil committed by 
its members. No human organization 
is without its share of the weak or 
vicious, and there is no lack of scandals 
in the Protestant denominations ; but 
in these there is a wholesome jealousy 
which usually seeks at once to cast out 
and punish the offender. Thus, when, 
in July, 1867, the Kev. Mr. Wendt, at 
an orphan institution near Philadel- 



phia, was discovered to be tampering 
with the virtue of the children under 
his charge, those who were most nearly 
connected with the management of the 
asylum were the first to take steps for 
his prosecution, and, as soon as the 
necessary legal proceedings could be 
had, he was undergoing a sentence of 
fifteen years' solitary confinement, with- 
out a voice being raised in palliation of 
his crime. 

2 Op. cit. pp. 138-44. 



ABUSE OF THE CONFESSIONAL, 



637 



proves how powerful were the forces protecting the church and re- 
pressing publicity under the Second Empire. The absence of cases 
in 1870-1 is probably attributable to the preoccupations of the 
Franco-Prussian War and its consequent troubles. While the presi- 
dency of M. Thiers, in 1872, yielded 10 cases, the reactionary gov- 
ernment of Marshal MacMahon showed but 12 cases in four years. 
After the fall of MacMahon the number rapidly increases, the first 
four months of 1879 affording no less than 19 cases. Whether, 
since then, this rate of progression has been maintained I have no 
means of knowing, but it is to be hoped that the breaking up of the 
unauthorized orders, and the increased vigilance of the authorities, 
aided by an aroused public sentiment, have led to a decrease in the 
dismal record. One deplorable feature of many of these cases is the 
large number of victims frequently represented in a single prosecu- 
tion, and that the perpetrator had often been afforded the opportunity 
of continuing his crimes in successive situations. Thus, in the affair 
of the Abbe Debra, at Liege, in 1877, there were 32 offences charged 
against him ; and, of those occurring in the single year 1878, frere 
Marien was condemned for no less than 299, frere Melisse, at Saint- 
Brice, for 50, frere Climene at Cande, Maze, and Martigne-Fer- 
chaud, for 25, and frere Adulphe at Guipry, Saint-Meloir-des-Ondes, 
and Pleurtuit, for 67. 

It would be a libel on human nature to assert that this catalogue 
of sin does not represent more than an average of wickedness, and 
the responsibility for the existence of so shocking a condition of 
morality must, at least in part, be attributed to the rule of celibacy, 
for there is nothing in the status of the church in France to attract 
to it those who seek merely a career of sloth and self-indulgence. The 
income of the parish priest in France only averages about 1100 francs 
per annum, and his position, in a vast majority of cases, is wholly 
insecure, being dependent altogether upon the pleasure of his bishop, 
who can dismiss him at any moment and thus deprive him of all 
means of livelihood. In 1866, out of a total of 33,707 priests in 
service, only 3715 held preferment of which they could not be thus 
deprived at the whim of their superiors. 1 A profession so poorly 



1 One result of this is that there is a 
large number of priests, summarily de- 
prived by their bishops of the ministry, 
who seek the great cities to hide their 
poverty or find some miserable means 
of support. As all requests for dispen- 



sation to marry are refused, they mostly 
live in concubinage and their offspring 
go to swell the ranks of the dangerous 
classes. See Chavard, Le Celibat des 
Pretres, pp. 542-48. 



638 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 

rewarded, subjected to discipline nominally so severe, and held under 
such a tenure, can scarce be expected to draw to its ranks men of 
character and position ; and in fact, the Bishop of Poitiers, in 1877, 
made in a pastoral letter the humiliating avowal that the better and 
more intelligent classes as a rule avoided the church, which was com- 
pelled to find its recruits among the children of peasants and laborers. 
This is confirmed by a work entitled " Le grand peril de l'eglise de 
France," issued in 1879 by the Abbe Bougaud, Vicar-General of 
Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans, by which it appears that the districts 
which furnish the most recruits are those which are most ignorant, 
and that, as education increases, the willingness to enter the church 
diminishes. Moreover, not only is this the case, but even the 
numbers of the secular clergy, necessary for the ministrations of 
religion, are deficient. In his own diocese of Orleans there were 
180 priests lacking, and in that of Troyes there were 100 parishes 
without cures ; and though the want of qualified ministers was daily 
increasing, the pupils in the seminaries were diminishing, and it 
seemed impossible to fill the void. 1 While some allowance must of 
course be made for the character of the material thus pressed into 
service, this fact only increases the responsibility of those who persist 
in subjecting youths fitted neither by nature nor training to the 
tremendous strain of enforced celibacy in a career which surrounds 
them with the most dangerous temptations. 

Irrespective of questions of morality, the rule of celibacy in mod- 
ern society is harmful to the state in proportion as it contributes to 
the aggrandizement of those who enforce it. A sacerdotal caste, 
divested of the natural ties of family and of the world, with interests 
in many respects antagonistic to the communities in which its mem- 
bers reside, with aims which, from the nature of the case, must be 
for the temporal advancement of its class, is apt to prove a dangerous 
element in the body politic, and the true interests of religion, as well 
as of humanity, are almost as likely to receive injury as benefit at 
its hands, especially when it is armed with the measureless power of 
confession and absolution, and is held in strict subjection to a hier- 
archy. Such a caste would seem to be the inevitable consequence 
of compulsory celibacy in an ecclesiastical organization such as that 
of the Catholic church, and the hierarchy based upon it can scarce 



1 "Wahu, op. cit. pp. 154^55. 



POSITION OF THE CHURCH. 639 

fail to become the enemy of human advancement, so long as the 
priest continues to share the imperfections of our common nature. 
How little the aims of that hierarchy have changed with the lapse 
of ages may be seen in the pretensions which it still advances, as of 
old, to subject the temporal sovereignty of princes and peoples to 
the absolute domination of the spiritual power. The temper of In- 
nocent III. and Boniface VIII. is still the leading influence in its 
policy, and the opportunity alone is wanting for it to revive in the 
nineteenth century the all-pervading tyranny which it exercised in 
the thirteenth. Even the separation of church and state is con- 
demned as a heresy, and as the state is denied the privilege of defining 
the limits of its own authority, and as the right of the church to use 
force is asserted, it would be difficult to set bounds to the empire 
which is its rightful heritage, and of which it is deprived by the 
irreligious tendencies of the age. 1 

Yet, in spite of this antagonism to the spirit of modern society 
and civilization, it would be futile to anticipate the downfall of the 
church, or even any marked modification in its general organization 
or teaching. It arose out of a necessity in human development. 
With all its aberrations, it has been, perhaps, the most efficacious 
of agencies for the improvement and civilization of man, and it will 
not disappear or undergo any essential change until the necessity for 
its existence shall have passed away in the elevation of mankind. 
The human race is not yet prepared for independence in religious 
and moral thought, and the masses in many lands will long require 
to be controlled with the awful authority claimed for an infallible 
church, and will find inexpressible comfort in that implicit faith 
which throws upon another the burden of sin and the responsibility 
of salvation. The church thus is doing its work, and has its work 
to do. We may, indeed, look forward hopefully to the time when 
the diffusion of education and the growth of intelligence will enable 
man to throw off the trammels which still are requisite to his well- 
being and well-doing, and will seek and obey his Creator without an 
intermediary, but that time is yet far off, and until it comes Latin 
Christianity has a mission from which it cannot be spared. 



1 Syllab. Dec. 1864 No. xix., xlii., liv., lv. 



NOTE 



A Catholic reviewer of my first edition has assured me that I am in error 
in assuming clerical celibacy to be a point of faith in his church. To use his 
own words — "The writer is mistaken when he calls the celibacy of the clergy 
a point of faith. It never was more than a point of discipline, as is keeping 
the fasts and other commandments of the church, which may be modified 
by the same authority which prescribed them." That it may, even as a 
point of faith, be abrogated by the same authority which defined it, I do not 
doubt, for everything is possible to a G-eneral Council guided by an infallible 
Pope ; that it may now be occasionally represented and even treated as a 
point of discipline, I think quite possible and shall not undertake to dispute, 
seeing that the Greek discipline is tolerated in that portion of the Greek 
church which admits the supremacy of Rome, 1 but that the council of Trent 
intended to make it a point of faith and did so make it is susceptible of the 
plainest demonstration. Any one who will read the Tridentine canons (ante, 
pp. 536-7) will see that their form is purely doctrinal and not disciplinary. 
If this be questioned, I may refer to Chr. Lupus, whose orthodoxy and 
accuracy in such matters no good Catholic can doubt, and who informs us, 
what indeed is self-evident, that the council of Trent classified its anathemas 
of faith as canons, and its regulations of discipline as decrees of reformation — 
"Sacrosancta Tridentina synodo fidei anathematismos, canones; morum 
autem regulas appellet decreta reformationis (App. ad Synod. Chalced. 
Art. I. — Opp. II. 248), and the anathemas on the subject will be found 
classed under the title "Doctrina de Sacramento Matrimonii," followed by 
disciplinary regulations under the rubric ' ' Decretuni de Peformatione Matri- 
monii." The form of the canons in fact tells its own story. The dread 
anathema, the final and highest condemnation of the church ("Anathema 
est seternse mortis damnatio et non nisi pro mortali debet imponi crimine et 
jlli qui aliter non potuerit corrigi" — Grat. Becret. P. II. Caus. xi. Q. iii. 
c. 41) is directed, not against him who actually marries, but against those 
who assert that all may marry who have not the gift of chastity ; and the 
same condemnation is pronounced on those who hold that marriage is prefer- 



1 Clement. PP. VIII. Instruct, super 
aliquibus ritibus Grwcorum, A. D. 
1595, g v. No. 27.— Benedict. PP. XIV. 



Bull. Etsi Pastoralis, A.D. 1742, \ vn. 
No. 16, 27, 28 (Concil. Collect. La- 
cens. II. 449, 517). 



CELIBACY AS A POINT OF FAITH. 641 

able to celibacy. It is therefore treated purely as a matter of belief, the 
mere discussion of which is practical heresy. This was the form adopted by 
the council throughout in defining points of faith, as, for instance, in treating 
of Original Sin, which no one will pretend to be a matter of discipline — 
' ' Si quis per Jesu Christi Domini nostri gratiam quse in baptismate confertur, 
reatum originalis peccati remitti negat . . . .anathema sit" (Sess. v. de 
Peccat. Orig. c 5). Any one believing in the validity of priestly marriage 
is therefore not merely a contemner of a point of discipline but a heretic, 
and it is simply a libel on the good fathers of Trent to assert that they would 
anathematize as worthy of perpetual perdition a simple theoretical opinion 
on a matter of discipline. 

Their intentions, moreover, as to this, are rendered indisputable by the 
answer of Pius V. in 1561, just before the final meeting of the Council, to 
the demand of Charles IX. for the concession of the cup to the laity. The 
pontiff states that he had considered that point and the marriage of the 
clergy to be matters of law, and therefore capable of alteration by due au- 
thority, but that, on expressing this opinion in the last conclave, he had been 
stigmatized as a Lutheran (Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. IV. 734). 
This is confirmed by the remarks of Fra Paolo on the canon which pronounces 
the anathema on those who deny that a non-consummated marriage is dis- 
solved by the vow of either spouse (Sess. XXIV. de Sacram. Matrim. c. vi.), 
where he alludes to the surprise caused by making it a point of faith — " Nel 
sesto anathematimismo del Matrimonio restarono molti ammirati che fosse 
posto per articolo di fede " (1st. del Concil. Trident. Lib. Vin. — Ed. Helm- 
stadt. II. 382). 

The same view continued long to be upheld as orthodox. It would be 
difficult to find a work published under auspices more authoritative than 
Andreas Forster's "De Coelibatu Clericorum Dissertatio, " a thesis publicly 
read in the University of Dillingen in 1782, printed by authority, and dedi- 
cated to Pius VI. At that time there were serious efforts making, in the 
bosom of the church itself, to overthrow the rule of celibacy, and there was 
no hesitation on the part of the ecclesiastical rulers to avow the full purport 
of the Tridentine canons. Forster accordingly does not scruple to declare the 
truth as to the orthodox doctrine, nor was exception taken to his assertion 
by the authorities whose imprimatur the volume bears. The condemnation 
of those, he says, who rashly assert that marriage can be contracted by those 
in orders or bound by solemn vows of chastity is a dogma of faith, while the 
definition that virginity is better than matrimony is a dogma of morals — 
"Pro certo nos tenemus et ab omnibus Catholicis tenendum esse firmiter 
adserimus, Ecclesiam in laudato consilio recte omnino definiisse .... melius 

41 



642 CELIBACY AS A POINT OF FAITH. 



ac beatius manere in virginitate aut ccelibatu quam jungi matrimonio. 
Kecte porro damnasse eos qui matrimonium a clericis in SS. Ordinibus con- 
stitutis, vel a regularibus castitatem solemniter professis, valide posse con- 
trahi temere adsererent. Et hoc ultimum ad Dogma Fidei, illud prius ad 
Dogma Morum proculdubio pertinet" (op. cit. I xxxi. Dilingae, 1782). In 
full accordance with this was the line of argument adopted by the advocates 
of the church in 1831, when it became necessary to overrule the decision 
which had authorized the marriage of the priest Dumonteil. They repre- 
sented that to permit the civil marriage of a priest was, in fact, to persecute 
the church, because "qui veutune religion la veut avec ses dogmes, et la 
chastete* du pretre e3t un de ceux de l'eglise Catholique" (Bouhier de 
l'£cluse, de l'£tat du Pretre en France, p. 31). 

I do not doubt that the peculiar dialectics by which Bishop Dupanloup 
explained away all that was shocking in the Syllabus of December, 1864 
(La Convention et l'Encyclique, Paris, 1865), might make out a tolerably 
fair line of argument to prove that the Tridentine fathers did not do what 
they meant to do. In the subtle insincerity which pervades the formulas of 
the Latin church, allowing either side of a question to be affirmed as oppor- 
tunity serves, the formulas of Trent constitute no exception. Thus if the 
rule of celibacy were to be abrogated, I presume that it could be readily 
accomplished by doing away with the vow of chastity and assuming that the 
administering of that vow is merely a matter of discipline. The papal 
power to dispense from vows is likewise too well established to be called in 
question, as was shown by the decision of the council of Trent on that very 
matter. The Latin church, in fact, has ample resources to enable it to adopt 
any line of policy that its rulers may consider adapted to the exigencies of 
the present or of the future ; and if it should, at any time, consider sacer- 
dotal and cenobitic celibacy undesirable, I am perfectly willing to concede 
that it would find no difficulty in setting aside or eluding the Tridentine 
anathemas; yet none the less would those anathemas remain to show us 
what was the position which it occupied in the sixteenth century. Mean- 
while it may be suggested to the orthodox who regard celibacy as merely dis- 
ciplinary that the church holds both marriage and ordination to be sacra- 
ments, and that a definition that the two are incompatible and a decision 
as to which of the two must give way to the other can hardly in the nature 
of things, or by any rational use of language, be regarded as merely a matter 
of discipline. Those, indeed, who are inclined to take such view, may well 
bear in mind the fate of Panzini, who, regarding celibacy as a point of dis- 
cipline, was condemned, in 1860, by the Boman Inquisition to twelve years' 
incarceration for merely writing an essay, which never was printed, arguing 
in favor of its impolicy. 



INDEX. 



ABBEY lands, disposition of in Ger- 
many, 434, 437, 439 
in England, 454, 482 
in Scotland, 508 
confiscated in France, 589 
in Italy, 609-10 
Abbo, St., of Fleury, his martyrdom, 153 
Abbot of Langdon, case of, 451 
of Crossed-Friars, case of, 457 
of Walden, his marriage, 463 
Abbots, their marriage, in Hungary, 401 
execution of English, 457 
Abelard, his description of monachism, 264 
his marriage, 269 
his " Sic et Non," 316 
his answer to Heloise, 348 
on abuse of confessional, 350 
Abingdon, Abbey of, 167 
Absalom of Scania, 252 
Absolution, purchasable, in Manichse- 

ism, 44 

marketable value of, in Rome, 356, 428 

mutual, of guilty priests, 428 

by partner in guilt, 346, 575-7, 633 

Abstinence from women in pagan 

priesthood, 49 

Abstinentes, heresy of, 33 

Abuse of confessional (see Confessional). 
Abyssinian church, customs of, 92 

Accomplice, immunity of, 291 

Acephali, 109, 115 

Adalberoof Metz ordains sons of priests, 154 
Adam de la Halle on Alexander IV., 334 
Adam de Marisco, his labors, 292 

Adela of Flanders, seeks to enforce 

celibacy, 260 

Adela of Flanders, miraculous cure of, 404 
Adelaide of Savoy, her interposition 

asked, 203 

Adolph of Nassau, Archb. of Mainz, 412 
Adorateurs de Jesus, 613 

Adrian I. asserts the morality of his 

clergy, 135 

Adrian VI., his views on priestly mar- 
riage, 422 
reproaches Diet of Nurnberg, 424 
on Luther's abrogation of celibacy, 432 
Adulphe, frere, case of, 637 
Adulterous wives of priests to be put 

away, 39 

of Huguenot pastors, 498 

Adultery, clerical, habitual, 247 

immunity for, 447 

toleration of, in Mexico, 565 

less objectionable than marriage, 627 

iElfric, St., of Canterbury, his canons, 172 

JSneas Sylvius (see Pius II.). 



Africa, celibacy urged on, 66 

introduction of celibacy in, 73 

immorality in, 81 

married bishops in, 89 

Donatist monks in, 107 

Agapetae, scandals of, 41, 50, 54, 78 

forbidden by Council of Elvira, 50 

by Council of Ancyra, 54 

by Council of Nicsea, 54 

by Emp. Honorius, 55 

Agde, Council of, in 506, 80 

Age, minimum, for vows in early 

church, 100, 105 

under Council of Trent, 587 

in France, 585 

in Tuscany, 587 

under Pius IX., 611 

for ordination under Council of 

Trent, 624 

for resident women, 626 

Agen, Manichaeism in 1100, 207 

Agnes, Empress, deprived of regency, 201 
Agrippa, Cornelius, on the clergy, 415 

on licenses to sin, 428 

on character of Roman prelates, 429 
Agudi, Father, case of, 607 

Ain-Traz, Synod of, in 1835, 91 

Aix, Council of, in 1850, 626 

Aix-la-Chapelle, proportion of clergy in,631 
Council of, in 817, 138 

in 836, 137 

Alain de 1'Isle on clerical morals, 321 

on Waldenses, 374 

Alberic, Cardinal, and the heretics, 370 
Alberic of Marsico, his crimes, 153 

Alberic of Ostia, Legate to England, 281 
Albero of Liege permits priestly mar- 
riage, 247 
Albero of Mercke, heresy of, 196 
Albero of Verdun, his efforts at reform, 264 
Albert II. (Emp.) fines concubinary 

priests, 396 

Albert of Bavaria asks for clerical mar- 
riage, 531, 539 
Albert of Brandenburg embraces Lu- 

theranism, 366 

founds kingdom of Prussia, 434 

Albert of Hamburg on chastity, 181 

his measures of reform, 189 

Albert of Mainz seeks to restrain 

priestly marriage, 419 

his proposed marriage, 434 

Albigenses, heresy of, 207 

attacked by St. Bernard, 331 

their tenets, 367 

Alby, extent of heresy in, 370 

Council of, in 1850, 626 



644 



INDEX 



Alcobaca, Abbot of, head of Order of 

St. Michael, 365 

Alcuin on disorders of Saxon nunneries, 165 
Aldebert of Le Mans, licentiousness of, 264 
Aldhelm, St., on virginity, 162 

Alemanni, unchastity of, 118 

Alexander II. seeks archbishopric of 

Milan, 209 

his election to Papacy, 200 

his estimate of Damiani, 186 

suppresses the Liber Gomorrh., 188 
he enforces the reform, 202 

his discouragement, 204 

he protects the Jews, 205 

his two missions to Milan, 213 

he authorizes war against mar- 
riage, 21 5 
he sends legation to Milan, 217 
his efforts in Spain, 303 
his letter to William the Con- 
queror, 272 
his death, 206 
enforcement of celibacy attributed 
to him, 225 
Alexander III. on married canons, 270 
his efforts in England, 281 
his endeavors at reform, 319, 321 
he inclines to priestly marriage, 325 
he confirms Order of St. James, 364 
on hereditary transmission, 516 
Alexander IV., his reforms, 333 
on corruption of laity by priest- 
hood, 350 
Alexander VI., his character, 345 
he grants marriage to Portuguese 

orders, 365 

his patience with Savonarola, 386 

he reforms the Benedictines, 403 

Alexander VII. defines solicitation, 575, 576 

Alexandria, disorderly monachism in, 106 

Alfonso the Wise on origin of celibacy, 28 

forbids priestly marriage, 308 

Alfonso VI. (Castile) asks for a legate, 304 

Alfonso VIII. of Leon, 306 

Alfonso I. v Portugal) founds orders of 

Avis and St. Michael, 365 

Alfonso I. (Naples) collects tax on con- 
cubines, 399 
Alfred on chastity of nuns, 166 
Allocution Acerbissimum, 609 
Alphonso Liguori, St., on clerical cor- 
ruption, 587 
Altmann of Passau, his mission to Con- 
stance, 229 
his enforcement of celibacy, 230 
Alva, Duke of, enforces reception of 

Council of Trent, 553 

Alvarez Pelayo, on Spanish clergy, 311 
Amalfi (see Melfi). 

Amandus of Maestricht, case of, 126 

Amandus, papal legate to Spain, 304 

Amboise, edict of, in 1562, _ 499 

Ambrose, St., admits disregard of celi- 
bacy, 67 
condemns Jovinian, 69 
priestly marriage attributed to him,250 
Ambrose of Camaldoli, 393 
America, Spanish church in, 563-66 
(See, also, United States and Canada.) 



Ammonius Saccas, 39 

Ammonius, St., his fortitude, 188 

Anabaptists, the, 438 

Anaelet, antipope, enforces celibacy, 342 
Anastasius (Emp.), revolts against, 107 
Anathema, nature of, 640 

for disbelief in celibacy, 536 

Ancarano, his opinion as to priests' 

concubines, 339 

Anchorite, estimate of chastity of, 348 

Ancyra, Council of, in 314, regulates 

priestly marriage, 51 

forbids agapetae, 54 

on vows of celibacy, 97 

Andrea of Vallombrosa on Milanese 

clergy, 210 

Andreas of Lunden on concubines, 197 
Andrew of Tarentum, case of, 123 

Angelric of Vasnau, case of, 142 

Angers, clergy of, their demoralization, 394 
Anglican bishops, regulations for their 

marriage, 489 

Anglican clergy, popular contempt for, 476 

restrictions on their marriage, 489 

flexibility of their faith, 490 

evil influences on their marriage, 494 

their position, 497 

Anglican Church, the, 444-497 

Queen Elizabeth's estimate of, 491 

Anglican priests, manual of confes- 
sional for, 634 
Anglican ritual, marriage service in, 476 
Anglo-Irish church, disorders of, 298 
Anglo-Saxon church, celibacy enforced, 162 

disorders of, in 10th century, 147, 167 
Angouleme, case occurring in, 269 

Anjou, Council of, in 453, 79 

in 1262, 1291, 1312, 332, 350 

Ann of Cleves, her marriage, 470 

Annates, increase of, by the Popes, 412 

withdrawn by Henry VIII., 450 

Anomalies, ethical, 269, 347, 627 

Anse, Council of, in 990, 156 

Anselm, St., on sacraments of sinful 

priests, 195 

his reforms. 273 

his death in 1109, 278 

Anselmo di Badagio (see Alexander II.). 
Anselmo, St., of Lucca, his persecu- 
tion, 222 
Antealtaria, Abbot of, 308 
Anthony, St., retires to the desert, 97 
Anthony of Ephesus, crimes of, 85 
Anthony of Prague enforces Triden- 

tine canons, 534 

heresy encouraged by corruption, 556 
Antichrist, anticipation of, 394 

Antidicomarianitarians, heresy of, 69 

Antioch, Council of, 42 

Antisacerdotalism of Vigilantius, 71 

mediseval, 370 sqq. 

Antoin, married canons of, 270 

Antonelli, Cardinal, imprisons Panzini, 602 

his daughter, 631 

Antwerp, Synod of, in 1610, 557, 562 

Apel, John, punished for marrying, 424 
Apocalypsis Goliae, 284 

Apollinaris of Rhodez, 118 

Apollo, celibacy of priestess of, 50 



INDEX. 



645 



Apology for Confession of Augsburg, 436 
Apostle, Junia the, 60 

Apostolical canons on digami, 37 

permit priestly marriage, 39 

marriage honored in, 48 

Apostolical constitutions on digami, 37 

permit priestly marriage, 39 

order of widows in, 42 

honors rendered to marriage, 48 

Apostolical Letter, Multiplices inter, 602 
Apostoloci, heresy of, 97 

Apotactici, heresy of, 33, 44 

Appeals discountenanced at Trent, 538 
Appeals to Rome, immunity caused by, 139 
their effect, 322 

forbidden by Alex. IV., 334 

Ap Rice and the Abbot of Walden, 463 
Aquinas, St. Thomas, on origin of celi- 
bacy, 28 
on sacraments of sinful priests, 195 
on vows, 321 
on absolution by guilty confessors, 575 
Arab monachism, nature of, 102 
Arabic version of Nicene canons, 53 
Aranda, Council of, in 1473, 400 
Archembald of Sens, his evil courses, 153 
Arechis of Beneventum, law of, 127 
Aretino, abuses in church of, 147 
Arfastus of Thetford, 272 
Arialdo, St., seeks archbishopric of 

Milan, 209 

raises question of priestly marriage,211 

is excommunicated, 212 

procures excom. of Archbp. Guido, 216 

his martyrdom, 217 

Arianism, celibacy under, 120 

Arith, Wm., on clerical disorders, 501 

Aries, Council of, in 314, 51 

in 441, 69, 79, 105 

Armagh, hereditary archbishops of, 296 

Armagh, Council of, in 1854, 626 

Armenia, hereditary priesthood in, 90 

Armenia, Council of, in 1362, 90 

Arnald of Brescia, heresy of, 195 

Arnaldo de Peralta, his reforms, 309 

Arnolfo, a reformer, fate of, 341 

Arran, Regent, favors the Reformation, 507 

Artemis, virgins for priestesses of, 50 

Arthur of Britanny a canon of Tours, 307 

Articles, Thirty-nine, clerical marriage 

in the, 490 

Articles, Forty-two, clerical marriage 

in the, 475, 490 

Articles, the Six, enacted by Parlia- 
ment, 467 
heretics burnt under them, 458 
their modification, 471 
repealed in 1547, 472 
popular call for their restoration, 475 
revived under Mary, 478 
repealed under Elizabeth, 487 
Artois, Council of, in 1025, 369 
Arundel of Canterbury on Lollardry, 381 
Asceticism, unknown to early Jews, 21 
in Brahmanism and Buddhism, 23 
in Essenism, 25 
not encouraged by Christ, 25 
tendency to, in Ebionism, 27 
tendencies of St. Paul, 31 



Asceticism, commencemnt of, in the 

church, 31 

repressed by the church, 32 

of heretics, 33 

stimulated by the heresies, 34 

and by influence of Buddhism, 35 
growth of, in the church, 36 

stimulated by neo-Platonism, 39 

and by Manichseism, 45 

combated by the church, 48 

overcomes all resistance, 49 

still voluntary in 4th century, 58 

becomes obligatory, 59 

reproved by Council of Gangra, 61 
voluntary in the East, 84 

severity of, in Armenia, 90 

of monachism, 97 

instances in 11th century, 227 

spreads among the laity, 241 

of Irish church, 160, 296 

neglect of, in Spain, 307 

mediaeval, 347, 359 

of military orders, 362 

of Albigenses, 368 

of Fraticelli, 377 

of Wickliffe, 381 

of Hussites, 383 

exclusion of women from monas- 
teries, 404 
influence of, on solicitation, 574 
in modern times, 612 
Aschaffenburg, Council of, in 1292, 196 
Ashera, worship of, 21 
Assembly, National, secularizes church 

property, 589 

legalizes clerical marriage, 590 

Assermentgs priests, 590 

Assideans, 24 

Astorga, Bishop of, on Council of Trent, 539 

Athanasius on priestly marriage, 58 

Athenagoras on morals of Christians, 33 

on second marriage, 36 

on asceticism, 103 

Athravas, hereditary functions of, 23 

Atto of Vercelli on female ministration, 60 

on dilapidation of property, 146 

on married priests, 152 

Attys, worship of, 50 

Augsburg, the Confession of, 436 

Augsburg, Council of, in 10th century, 55 

in 952, 149 

in 1548, 514, 525 

in 1567, 561 

in 1610, 549 

Augsburg, Diet of, in 1518, 416 

in 1530, 435 

in 1548, 441, 524 

in 1551 and 1555, 443 

Augsburg Formula of Reformation, 

524, 526, 528 
Augustin of Canterbury, 161 

Augustin, St., on Jewish high-priest- 
hood, 22 
on marriage, 47, 314 
on marriage of nuns, 104 
on Manichaeism, 46 
his testimony as to Jovinian, 70 
he enforces celibacy, 74 
on temporary nature of vows, 97 



646 



INDEX. 



Augustin, St., on wandering monks, 102 

on danger of female residence, 138 
Augustin, Rule of, adopted by military 

orders, 362, 363 
Augustinians of Gloucester, suppres- 
sion of, 457 
of Niirnberg, secularization of, 425 
of Saxony, revolution of, 420 
Aunts, residence of, forbidden, 138, 628 
Aurelius, St., enforces celibacy, 73 
Auricular confession, commencement of,566 
Auscb, Congres fraternel in 1793, 593 
Ausch, Council of, in 1851, 626 
Australia, Council of, in 1844, 633 
Austrasia, reforms in, 130 
Austria, enforcement of celibacy in, 251 
efforts for clerical marriage in, 601 
civil marriage in, 605 
monastic orders in 1859, 615 
Autun, Council of, in 690, 80 
Auvergne, Council of, in 535, 80 
Auxerre, Council of, in 578, 80 
persecution of celibacy in, 593 
Availles, case occurring at, in 1817, 635 
Avellano, monks of, 186 
Avesbury, nunnery of, its morals, 282 
d'Avesnes, case of tbe, 323 
Avignon, residence of popes in, 342 
Council of, in 1594, 560 
in 1725 and 1849, 626 
Avila, his casuistry, 578 
Avis, order of, 365 
Avrancbes, Council of, in 1172, 319 
Ayenbite of Inwyt, 348 
Azzo, Archbishop of Milan, 218 



BABETJS grants marriage in orders, 92 
Babueus excommunicates Barsuma, 92 
Bachelors ineligible to episcopate, 38 

Badegisilus of Le Mans, 118 

Baden, petitions for clerical marriage 

in 1828, 601 

Bahia, Council of, in 1707, 626 

Baithusin, hereditary priesthood of, 22 

Bale, Bishop, his writings, 473, 480 

Bale, Council of, 395 

reconciles the Hussites, 382 

clerical marriage suggested in, 406 

canons of, affirmed in Scotland,1559,505 

revived in Germany, 528 

Balsamon on legislation of Greek church, 87 

Baltimore, Councils of, in 1829, 1843, 633 

in 1840, 627 

in 1866, 627, 633 

Bamburg, troubles of, in 1431, 395 

Synod of, in 1491, 196 

morals of clergy in 1505, 431 

Bandello, Bishop, his novels, 430 

Bangor, morals of clergy of, 463, 494 

Baptism by immoral priests invalid, 162 

repetition of, refused, 163 

Baptisma igneum, 438 

Barbarians, the, and the Church, 117-25 

superior morality of, 82 

Bardsey, Culdees of, 301 

Bari, military bishops of, 180 

Barnabite college at Monza, case of, 621 

Baronius on Gregory of Nazianzum, 58 



Barrios, Bish. of SantafS, regulations of,563 

Barsuma of Nisibi, case of, 92 

Barsumas, Abbot, at Ephesus, 107 

Bartelot, John, case of, 457 
Bartholomew of Bracara, his demand 

for reforms, 534 

Basil, St., his strictness, 84 

Basilica of Leo the Philosopher, 87 

Basilides, heresy of, 34 
Bastardy increased by celibacy, 629, 631 
Bathing, promiscuous, 41, 42 
Baumgartner, Aug., his speech at Trent,518 
Bavaria, marriage of nuns forbidden, 

in 772, 135 
demand for clerical marriage in, 

442, 531, 536 

clerical marriage after C. of Trent, 554 

immorality of clergy, 16th cent., 548 

abuse of confessional in, 570 

proportion of clergy in, 631 

Beards, clergy insist on wearing, 553 

Beatoun, Cardinal, his immorality, 503 

his proclamation of 1540, 511 

Bede on Aaron's linen breeches, 65 

on the rule of celibacy, 161 

Beggars' Petition, the, 453 

Beggars, legislation against, under 

Henry VIII., 455 
Begghards, the, 376 
Beguines, condemnation of, 377 
Belgium, monastic orders in, 615 
clerical attacks on public schools, 623 
clerical morality in, 629 
Bellarmine on story of Paphnutius, 57 
his defence of celibacy, 581 
Beltis, 21 
Benchor, oratory of, 295 
Benedict VIII. enforces celibacy, 178 
Benedict IX., character of, 179 
he sells the papacy, 184 
is reinstated as pope, 187 
Benedict XIV. approves of Savonarola, 386 
on abuse of confessional, 577 
Benedict of Camin on clerical morals, 401 
Benedict the Levite on residence of fe- 
male relations, 138 
Benedict, St., of Nursia, 111 
his example followed, 246 
salvation procured by him, 335 
rule of, becomes universal, 131 
supplemented by Louis-le- 

Debonnaire, 136 
adopted by military orders, 362 
Benedictine order, saints in, 113 
its services to civilization, 357 
its morals in 15th century, 403 
Benefices held by tenure of chastity, 311 
bestowal of, on servants, 515 
hereditary (see Hereditary Trans- 
mission). 
Benefit of clergy for married priests, 291 
extended to concubines, 339 
Benevento, Council of, in 1693, 574, 626 
Benzo, his account of Hildebrand, 197 
his use of the term Paterins, 212 
on Nicolitism, 238 
Berenger of Tours on priestly mar- 
riage, 256 
Bernald of Constance on Paphnutius, 56 



INDEX. 



647 



Bernard, St., reforms effected by him, 265 
miracle wrought by him, 266 

on barbarism of Ireland, 296 

his hymn on St. Malachi, 297 

on dissolution of priestly mar- 
riage, 316 
his defence of marriage, 331 
on influence of papal court, 346 
on the Albigenses, 368 
on the Petrobrusians, 370 
on Manichaean abhorrence of mar- 
riage, 545 
Bernard of Font-Cauld on Waldenses, 374 
Bernard of Tiron preaches reform, 258 
Bernhardi, Bart., marries in 1521, 419 
Bernhardus Baptisatus, his sermon, 391 
Bertrand, St., of Comminges, miracle 

by, 269 

Berytus, Synod of, in 448, 82 

Besancon, Synod of, in 1707, 562, 576 

Beverege, John, burnt, 510 

Beza, Theod., on marriage in Anglican 

church, 489 

Beze, charter to monastery of, 265 

Bhagavad-gita, the, 92 

Bhikshus and Bhikshunis, Bhuddist, 94 
Bigamy of priests in 10th century, 167 

in 11th century, 172, 181 

in 12th century, 247 

caused by celibacy, 278 

penalties of, for clerical marriage, 598 
Bigorre, legalized concubinage in, 197 

Bilio, Card., author of the Syllabus, 604 
Bisantio of Bari, 180 

Bishops, marriage of (see Marriage). 
Bishops to be husbands of one wife, 38 

number of digamous, 37, 159 

their morality in Coptic church, 93 
witnesses required for their chas- 
tity, 131 
they are nominated by the Mero- 
vingians, 118 
are held responsible for diocesan 

property, 123 

their power increased by institu- 
tion of canons, 135 
wer-gild for their godsons, 162 
their military character in 10th 

century, 153 

in 11th century, 180 

they are attacked by Damiani, 198 

their lukewarmness as to celibacy, 233 

penalties for tolerating priestly 

marriage, 242 

their wives rank as countesses, 259 
their children eligible to ordina- 
tion, 298 
female intercourse forbidden to 

them, 303 

they sell licenses to sin, 389, 432, 559 
concubinary, punishment for, at 

Trent, 538 

opposing clerical marriage exiled, 594 
their restoration of celibacy in 

Prance, 595 

Irish, poverty of, 297 

Bishops, Anglican, regulation for mar- 
riage of, 489 
position of their wives, 495 



Bishoprics, hereditary, in Britanny, 259 
in Ireland, 296 

created from English monasteries, 459 
Blacater, Bishop, persecutes Lollards, 501 
Bloodletting of monks, 138 

Bohemia, priestly marriage in 11th 

century, 243 

enforcement of celibacy in, 246 

marriage in post-Tridentine church, 554 
Waldensian refugees in, 375 

Begghards in, 377 

Hussitism in, 383 

Orthodox Brethren in, 385 

Bois-le-duc, Synod of, in 1571, 562 

in 1612, 558 

Boisset, permission to marry refused 

to him, 597 

Bologna, Cossa as Legate in, 344 

Bologna, Council of Trent transferred 

to, 442, 521 

Bonaventura, St., on absolution, 346 

on abuse of confessional, 350 

on dilapidation of church property, 407 

Boniface IX., legalized simony under, 398 

he relaxes the rule of Pulda, 404 

Boniface of Canterbury, 290 

Boniface of Lausanne, his fate, 341 

Boniface, St., his scruples as to Frank- 

ish clergy, 128 

he reforms the Frankish clergy, 131 

attempts on his life, 133 

on infanticide caused by celibacy, 137 

on Anglo-Saxon church, 163 

he founds Abbey of Fulda, 404 

Bonizo of Piacenza, martyrdom of, 222 

Bonn, Old Catholic Synod of, in 1878, 604 

Bonner, Bishop, deprives married 

priests, 478 

his visitation of London, 479 

scandals concerning him, 486 

Bonosus, his heresy, 68 

Books of canon law burned by Luther, 418 
Bora, Catharine von, marries Luther, 425 
Bordeaux, Councils of, in 1583, 1624, 560 
in 1850, 626 

Borgia, Eoderic, his character, 345 

Boseteha, wife of Cosmo of Prague, 245 
Bosnia, heretics of, 369 

Bossaert d'Avesnes, case of, 323 

Bossu d'Arras, Le, on Alex. IV., 334 

Bossuet, his probable marriage, 582 

Botoa, monastery of, 306 

Bougaud, Abbe, on dangers to the 

church, 63S 

Bourges, Council of, in 1031, 179 

in 1528, 515 

in 1584, 560 

in 1800, 595 

in 1850, 626 

Bourne, Sir John, complains of Chapter 

of Worcester, 491 

his quarrel with Sandys, 496 

Boussard, Geoffroi, on origin of celibacy, 29 
on dispensing power, 407 

Boutaric on droit de marquette, 355 

Bouthors on droit de marquette, 355 

Boyer on droit de marquette, 354 

Bracton on position of concubines, 197 
Braga, Councils of, in 563, 572, and 675, 80 



648 



INDEX, 



Brahmanism, asceticism of, 23 
Branda, Cardinal, his reforms, 392 
Brazil, suppression of monasteries in, 609 
Brecislas of Bohemia, 243 
Bremen, Council of, in 1266, 253 
Breslau, Council of, in 1279, 252 
in 1416, 338 
in 1580, 555 
Brethren of the Cross, 385 
Brethren, Orthodox, 385 
Bribes to avert suppression of monas- 
teries, 454 
Brice, St., case of, 77 
Bridfrith, his life of St. Dunstan, 166 
Bristol, see of, created, 460 
Britanny, church of, 120 
priestly marriage in, 259 
heresies in, 371 
British clergy, their corruption, 159 
church, discipline of, 160 
in 9th century, 171 
Brixen, schismatic Synod of, in 1080, 238 
orthodox Synod, in 1603, 562 
Brothels kept by prelates, 429 
frequented by priests, 586 
de Brou-Lauriere, case of, 600 
Bruges, Synod of, in 1693, 562 
Brunhilda, appeal of Gregory I. to, 124 
Bruno of Toul created pope, 187 
Bruno, St., reforms effected by, 265 
founds the Grande Chartreuse, 404 
Brunswick, chapter of, in 1476, 400 
Brut y Ty wysogion on married clergy, 171 
Bruys, Pierre de, his heresy, 370 
Bucer insists on priestly marriage, 441 
Buddha, Sankhyism of, 23 
his legend, 35 
death of his mother, 68 
Buddhism, its influence on Christianity, 34 
its connection with Manichaeism, 44 
its system of monachism, 94 
Bulgaria, Manichaeism transmitted 

through, 207 

Bulgarian church, rules for, 141 

Bull, Papal, Exsurge Domine, 418 

Ad canonum, 516 

Cum primum, 548 

Horrendum, 548 

Ad Bomanum, 549 

Quae ordini, 549 

Postquam verus, 550 

Quemadmodum sollicitus, 552 

Cum sicut nuper, 568 

Universi Dominici gregis, 569 

Etiam pastoralis, 577 

Saeramentum poenitentiae, 577 

Auctorem fidei, 587 

suppressing English monasteries, 447-9 

excommunicating Henry VIII., 455 

defining Cardinal Pole's powers, 478 

reconciling England, 483 

Burckhardt of Worms on celibacy, 178 

his instructions to confessors, 566 

Bure, Idelette de, Calvin's wife, 498 

Burghley endeavors to restrain Q. 

Elizabeth, 492 

Burgos, Council of, in 1080, 304 
Burial, Christian denied to married 

priests, 192 



Burial, Christian, denied to concubines, 310 
Burmah, number of monks in, 95 

Burnet, Bishop, on the English monas- 
teries, 451 
on the Beggars' Petition, 453 
Burning alive threatened for married 

priests, in 1524, 423 

Butler, John, on marriage of clergy, 466 



CABASSUT on Apostolical canons, 49 

Cadalus, his election as antipope, 200 
his cause embraced by Milan, 215 
Cadam, Transaction of, 439 

Cadiere, Catherine, case of, 579 

Cassarea, Synod of, about 360, 61 

Caesarius, St., of Aries, Rule of, 112 

on marriage of nuns, 111 

Cassarius of Heisterbach on influence 

of priesthood, 346 

Cain Patraic, the, 159 

two classes of bishops in, 295 

Caisho, priest of, his case, 485 

Calabria, celibacy enforced in, 76, 320 

Calatrava, knights of, marriage per- 
mitted to, 364 
Calini, Archbp., his reports from Trent, 534 
Calixtins, the, 383 
Calixtus I., his laxity, 37 
Calixtus II., on Manichasism, 208 
he enforces celibacy in France, 267 
his consequent unpopularity, 268 
he declares marriage dissolved by 

orders, 313 

on abuse of confessional, 567 

Calixtus, his work on celibacy, 583 

Calne, Council of, in 978, 170 

Calvi, Donato, on religious orders, 96 

Calvin, his confession of faith, 498 

his marriage, 498 

Calvinism, 498-513 

itfi discipline, 498 

clerical marriage a matter of 

course, 498, 510 

Calvinist converts, marriage of, 499 

Camaldoli, monks of, 183 

their demoralization, 393 

Cambrai, Manicbasism in 1025, 207 

Hildebrandine doctrine punished, 236 

Council of, in 1025, 208 

in 1550, 528 

in 1565 and 1567, 559 

in 1631, 560 

in 1661, 576 

Camin, Synods of, in 1454 and 1492, 402 

Campeggi, Card., persecutes married 

priests, 423 

heresy justified by clerical immor- 
ality, 430 
assists in suppression of English 
monasteries, 449 
Canada, duration of vows in, 613 
modern Councils of, 626-7, 633 
Canonical age for resident women, 626 
Canons, Apostolical (see Apostolical). 
Canons regular, institution of, 134 
of Fecamp, expulsion of, 155 
discussion concerning their mar- 
riage, 263 



INDEX, 



649 



Canons are forced to cloistered life, 
marriage of, in 12th century, 
hereditary in England, 
replace Culdees in Scotland, 
laxity of their rule, 
of Compostella, reform of, 
demoralization of, in 15th cent., 
their unclerical habits, Germany, 

14th century, 
of Brunswick in 1476, their morals, 
of Lausanne, their demoralization, 
of Munster refuse to be reformed, 
of Milan, their contest with St. 
Charles Borromeo, 
Canterbury, Christ Church, in 11th cent. 

number of married clergy in, 
" Capacities" given to ejected monks, 
Capito, Wolf. Fab., persecutes married 
priests, 
is married, 
Caprara, Legate, on married priests, 
Capua, Council of, in 389, 
Caraffa, Card., on need of reformation, 
Cardinalate,childlessness a prerequisite, 
Cardinal's college, founded by Wolsey, 
Carinthia, enforcement of celibacy in, 
Carloman seeks to reform the church, 

128, 
enters Monte Casino, 
Carlostadt advocates priestly marriage, 

favors the Anabaptists, 
Carlovingian alliance with the church, 

civilization, its disappearance, 
Carmelites, corruption of, 353, 

Carnarvonshire, complaints of priests in, 
Carpoerates, heresy of, 
Carracioli, Bishop of Troyes, married, 
Carterius, Bishop, case of, 
Carthage, immorality in, 
Council of, in 348, 
in 390, 
in 397, 

in 398, 49 

in 401, 
in 411, 
in 419, 
Carthusian asceticism, 
Carthusians of London resist Henry 

VIII., 
Cashel, Archb. of, on children of bis- 
hops, 
Cashel, Council of, in 1171, 

in 1853, 
Cassander, G., on clerical marriage, 
Cassianus, heresy of, 
Cassianus, St., Bule of, 101, 

Cassiodorus relates the story of Paph- 

nutius, 
Caste, priestly, dangers of creating, 
Castel-Fuerte, Marques del, 
Castration of Galli, 
Castro, Alfonso de, heresy justified by 

clerical wickedness, 
Casuistry applied to solicitation, 

571, 575, 
its effect on morality, 
Catarini, Card., and theVatican Council, 
Catarino, Ambrogio, 
Cathari, heresy of, 207, 



265 

270 
272 
300 
307 
305 



340 
401 
429 

548 

550 
171 

489 
455 

420 
423 
596 
68 
522 
550 
44 7 
233 

130 
134 
419 
438 
128 
143 
587 
400 

34 
499 

37 

82 
100 

73 

73 
, 73 

74 
107 

74 
359 

450 

297 
298 
633 
542 
33 
110 

57 
225 
565 

50 

430 

576 
578 
604 
418 
367 



Catharine von Bora, 425 

Catherine de Medicis on reception of 

Council of Trent, 546 

her efforts for clerical marriage, 559 
Catholicism, observances borrowed 

from Buddhism, 35 

from Mazdeism, 44 

Catholics, persecution of, in Scotland, 512 

Caumont, case of married priest of, 258 

Cavour introduces civil marriage in 

Sardinia, 605 

suppresses monasteries in Sar- 
dinia, 609 
Cele-de, or Culdee, 299 
Celestin III. on vows and marriage, 321 
on hereditary priesthood, 326 
Celestin (pseudo) on abuse of confes- 
sional, 567 
Celibacy, its influence on history, 19 
its post-apostolical origin ad- 
mitted, 27 
not favored in Apost. Constitutions, 48 
its enforcement by Council of El- 
vira in 305, 50 
not required by Council of Nieaea, 53 
its first enforcement, 64 
opposition to it, 67 
attributed to Gregory L, 124 
and to Gregory VII., 224 
its necessity to the church, 193, 225 
deprecated by Alexander III., 325 
its final enforcement, 330 
its results, 331-361 
Wickliffe's opinion of it, 379 
condemned by Lollards, 381 
maintained by Hussites, 384 
not observed by Orthodox Breth- 
ren, 385 
nor by Brethren of the Cross, 385 
evils attributed to, 394 
is deprecated in 15th century, 405 
is denounced by Luther, 418 
is the main obstacle to reunion, 544 
is made a point of faith in 1528, 515 
and by Council of Trent, 536, 640 
and by the Inquisition, 603 
attacked in the 18th century, 582 
persecuted in French Revolution, 593 
reestablished after the Terror, 595 
modern policy of the church, 602-4 
is likely to be maintained in the 

future, 607, 608 

modern influence of, 638 

Celibates, disabilities of, removed, 99 

Celsus of Armagh, 296 

Celtic churches, original purity of, 295 

Cenobitic life, commencement of, 97 

Ceres, celibacy of priestesses of, 50 

Cereza, father, of Monza, 621 

Cesarini, Cardinal, on revolt against 

church, 395 

Ceylon, number of monks in, 95 

Chalcedon, Council of, in 451, 107 

Chalons, Council of, in 649, 80 

in 813, 567 

in 893, 142 

Chantries, English, absorption of, 459 

Charibert, his laws on forcible marriage, 120 
Charity of the monastic orders, 358 



42 



650 



INDEX. 



Charity in modern church, 612, 616 

religious organization of,in France, 615 
Charlemagne, his efforts to reform the 

church, 134, 135 

Charles, Archduke, asks for clerical 

marriage, 544 

Charles Eorromeo, St., his reforms, 550-2 
Charles-le-Chauve on appellate juris- 
diction of Rome, 139 
Charles the Lame imposes fines on 

concubinage, 339 

Charles Martel oppresses the church, 129 
his punishment, 130 

Charles IV. (Emp.) urges reform, 340 

Charles V. (Emp.), his policy in 1530, 435 
he temporizes with the Reforma- 
tion, 439, 440 
he issues the Interim, 441 
he demands dispensations for mar- 
ried priests, 442 
he accepts the Reformation, 443 
his demands for Council of Trent, 519 
he objects to its transfer to Bologna, 521 
on the reforms of Paul III., 522 
he seeks to reform the German 
church, 524 
Charles VII. (France) fines concubin- 

ary priests, 396 

Charles IX. (France) asks for clerical 

marriage, 533, 641 

Charles de Valois intervenes in Flan- 
ders, 323 
Charter-House, monks of, their fate, 450 
Charter of Oswalde's Law, 169 
Charters of 1814 and 1830, 600 
Chartier, Alain, on condition of church, 394 
Chartreuse, strictness of rules of, 404 
Chassidim, 24 
Chastity, estimate of, by Cassianus, 102 
feudal tenure by, 153, 311 
gift of, to be obtained by seeking, 

331, 530, 536 
gift of, assured by Council of Trent, 624 
sacrifice of, 21 

vows of, their introduction, 41 

their perversion, 127 

required for holy orders, 179 

in military orders, 362 

maintained in the Six Articles, 468 
papal dispensation for, 535, 642 
never dispensed for, 611 

prelates at Trent sworn to 
support, 533 

Chatillon, Cardinal de, his marriage, 499 
Chaucer on priest's children, 338 

on corrupting influence of priests, 351 
Chavard, Abbe, case of, 601 

on age of ordination, 624 

Chelsea, Council of, in 787, 164 

Chepstow, Abbess of, accuses Dr. Lon- 
don, 457 
Cheregato, Legate, on priestly immu- 
nity, 424 
Chertsey, monastery of, reformed, 169 
Chester, see of, created, 460 
Childebert, his laws on forcible mar- 
riage, 120 
Child-bearing, importance of, among 

the Jews, 21 



Child-bearing, St. Paul's estimate of, 31 
Children cause ineligibility to episco- 
pate, 87 
and to cardinalate, 550 
Children of ecclesiastics (see Heredi- 
tary transmission). 
in tenth century, 145, 146, 148, 149 
ordained by Adalbero of Metz, 154 
disabilities of, in 11th century, 179 
yet openly provided for, 181 
ineligibility of, 184 
refused preferment by Henry III., 187 
admitted by Alexander II., 205 
declared infamous in 1266, 253 
openly acknowledged in Normandy,258 
have claims on paternal benefice, 265 
disallowed in England in 1102, 274 
their ordination permitted in 1107, 276 
refused in 1144, 281 
universal in 13th century, 285 
forbidden in 1237, 288 
universal in Spain, 

304, 305, 311, 400 

favored by dispensing power, 321 

forbidden by Celestin III., 326 

rendered heritable by Fred. II., 335 

fruitless efforts to prevent it, 327-8 

legislation of Clement VII., 616 

papal dispensation for, 517 

regulations in Scotland, 1559, 505 

of Council of Trent, 538 

of Pius V., 548 

of Synod of Augsburg, 1610, 549 

of Salzburg, 1616, 554 

of Osnabruck in 1625, 558 

of apostate priests in France, 500 

of priests by slaves emancipated, 563 

of knights of Spanish orders, 364 

of Anglican priests legitimated 

in 1552, 476 

legitimated under Elizabeth, 488 

held illegitimate, 494, 496 

China, development of Buddhism in, 95 

Christ, his toleration of Essenism, 25 

Christ Church College founded by 

Wolsey, 447 

Christians, puritanism of early, 32 

Christians, heretics of Bosnia, 369 

Christianity, purifying influence of, 354 
Chrodegang of Metz, Rule of, 134 

Chrysostom, St. John, on virginity, 85 

Church, morals of (see Morals). 

the Ante-Nicene, 31 

the Latin, its influence, 16 

its temporalities endangered 
by marriage, 63, 123 

extension of its jurisdiction, 139 

growth of its independence, 143 

it is a protector of the weak, 182 

necessity of celibacy to it, 193 

its responsibility, 355 

enmity against it in 15th cent., 

394, 395 
its growth under Pius IX., 608 

its superiority to the State, 618 

its modern claims, 639 

lands, question of, in Reforma- 
tion, 437, 439 
fate of, in England, 454 



INDEX. 



651 



Church lands, fate of, in Scotland, 508 

in France, 589 

in Italy, 609 

Churches, confessions only to be heard 

in, 574 

Churching of wives of priests forbidden, 595 
Cincinnati, Council of, in 1861, 627 

Cipriani, Gius., on clerical morality, 632 
Circester, Synod of, in 1289, 350 

Circumcelliones, 107, 109 

Cirita, Juan, St., case of, 111 

Cistercian order, relaxation of, 403 

Cistercian Rule adopted by knights of 

Calatrava and Avis, 364, 365 

Cities, monks not allowed to enter, 108 

Civil marriage, 605-7 

practical control of church over, 607 
Civil power invoked to remove concu- 
bines, 559, 560 
Civilization promoted by monachism, 

113, 357 
Clarembald, Abbot, his morals, 281 

Clares, bare'ooted, in Paris, 612 

Claude of Evreux essays reform, 560 

Claude of Macon essays reform, 515 

Claustrals, Franciscan, 402 

Clemanges on condition of church, 

343, 388, 389, 390, 394 

Clement II. appointed by Henry III., 184 

endeavors to suppress simony, 185 

Clement III. on self-mutilation, 40 

on children of bishops, 297 

enforces the canons, 326 

Clement IV. enforces celibacy in Austria,251 

and in Denmark, 253 

Clement VII. maintains the claims of 

the church, 435 

his bulls to Wolsey, 448 

on hereditary transmission, 516 

Clement III. (Antipope) on concubin- 
age, 238 
his death in 1100, 242 
Clement of Alexandria on heresies, 33 
on the Virgin, 68 
Clement, Bishop, case of, 132 
Clement of Versailles on clerical mar- 
riage, 594 
Cleonique, frere, case of, 620 
Clergy worse than laity, 

168, 265, 282, 428-31, 530, 552 
it corrupts the laity, 

340, 353, 388, 504, 518, 532, 560, 629 
Clergy, Anglican, position of, 497 

French, become antagonistic to 

Revolution, 589 

their present position, 637 

Spanish, their rudeness, 302 

resistance of, to celibacy, 

202, 212, 222, 228, 231 
statistics of, in modern times, 

588, 593, 630 
Clermont, Council of, in 1095, 263 

in 1130, 314 

Cleves, Duke of, demands clerical mar- 
riage, 531 
Climene, frere, case of, 637 
Clotair I., laws on forcible marriage, 120 
Clotair II. on monastic excesses, 115 
Clovesho, Council of, in 747, 164 



Cnut the Great, his laws, 173 

Cochin China, abuse of confessional in, 578 
Cochlseus, John, on Confession of Augs- 
burg, 542 
Code civile, clerical marriage under, 597 
Coeur de Jesus, society of, 613 
Coklaw, Thomas, marriage of, 509 
Colet, John, his work, 445 
Colloquy of Poissy in 1561, 559 
Cologne, Council of, in 1146, 208 
in 1260, 338 
in 1306, 377 
in 1307 and 1310, 340 
in 1423, 393 
in 1527, 514 
in 1536, 518 
in 1548, 526 
in 1549, 1550, 1551, 527 
in 1651, 562 
in 1662, 558, 562 
in 1860, 1863, 627, 633 
Manichssism in 1146, 207 
condemnation of Lolhard in, 377 
clerical marriage forbidden in 1548, 530 
proportion of clergy in, 631 
Archbishop of, asks for clerical 
marriage, 539 
Coloman, King, enforces celibacy, 249 
Columba, St., his labors, 126 
his mission to Scotland, 160 
Comedians forbidden to perform in 

nunneries, 527 

Commendone, Legate, promises cleri- 
cal marriage, 531 
Comminges, miracle occurring in, 269 
Communion, refusal of, in Belgium, 623 
Communion in both elements in early 

church, 44 

refused to laity, 45 

demanded by the Hussites, 384 

by Emperor Ferdinand, 530 

by Bavaria, 536 

by Charles IX., 641 

granted to Germany, 541 

withdrawn, 543 

Comparative merits of virginity and 

marriage, 46, 47, 318, 347 

settled by Council of Trent, 536, 641 
Compiegne, marriage of priests in, 270 
Compostella, Council of, in 1056, 303 

in 1113, 303, 306 

canons of, 302 

their reform, 305 

Compurgation, immunity gained by, 140 
Concordat of 1516 with France, 428 

of 1801, 595 

clerical marriage under it, 596-98 
monastic orders forbidden, 613 
Concubinage, punishment of, by Justi- 
nian, 87 
is worse than marriage in Milan, 210 
is more venial than marriage in 

orthodoxy, 349, 627 

is recognized as a necessity, 353, 389 
its punishment under the Six Ar- 
ticles, 468 
in Anglican Church, 494 
its recognition asked for, 527 
its punishment at Trent, 538 



652 



INDEX. 



Concubinage in the modern church, 626-32 

(See, also, Licenses to Sin.) 
Concubinarians ineligible in Saxon 

Church, 162 

proportion of, among the clergy, 519 
Concubines of clergy in Spain, 121, 517 
priests compelled to keep them,310, 388 
priests fined for not keeping them, 389 
they acquire legal position, 339 

they do not count in digamy, 349 

are liable to death under the Six 

Articles, 468 

are not punished at Trent, 539 

secular aid invoked for their re- 
moval, 559, 560 
Concubines, their position in middle 

ages, 196 

Condom, persecution of celibacy, 593 

Confessio Golise on celibacy, 290 

Confession of Augsburg, 436, 443 

Confession of Faith, Calvinistic, 498 

Confession not good against accomplice,291 
Confession, auricular, commencement 

of, 566 

dispensation from, 428 

Confessional, abuse of, in middle ages, 

311, 350, 352 
in Germany, 16th century, 432 

in nunneries, 523 

acknowledged at Trent, 534 

in post-Tridentine Church, 566-80 
in Italy, 18th century, 586, 588 

in modern times, 632-7 

testimony of Ernest Renan, 625 

Confessionals, regulations concerning, 

574, 632 
Confessors, guilty, absolution by, 575-7 
protection accorded to them, 570, 633 
Confiscation of estates of married 

priests, 87 

Congregations, religious, subjected to 

the State, in 1760, 585 

Conjo, convent of S. Maria of, 307 

Conrad, King of Lombardy, 220 

Conrad, Legate, holds Council of Mainz, 337 
Conrad of Mainz on the Hussites, 384 

Conrad of Prague, the Hussite, 384 

Conrad of Wurtzburg on morals of 

clergy, 424, 431 

Consenza, Council of, in 1579, 553 

Conseyo de la Suprema on solicitation, 

569, 571 
Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, 

516, 522, 549 

put into the Index, 523 

Constance, enforcement of celibacy in, 229 

assembly of, in 1094, 243 

Council of, in 1415, deposes John 

XXIIL, 343 

its failure, 390 

Synod of, in 1567, 430, 562 

in 1609, 557, 562 

Bishop of, defends his clergy, 340 

Constance of Burgundy, her influence, 304 

Constantino assembles the C. of Nicgea, 52 

encourages monachism, 99 

Constantino Copronymus, persecution 

of monks by, 90 

Constantino (Pope) threatens Witiza, 121 



Constantino of St. Symphorian, 154 

Constantinople, Council of, in 381, 84 

in 400, 85 

in 680, 88 

Constitutions, Apostolical (see Apostolical). 
Constitution of 1791, clerical marriage 

in, 591 

Contarini, Cardinal, on need of re- 
formation, 522 
on evils of celibacy, 561 
Continence overbalanced by pride, 32 
Continence, vows of (see Chastity). 
Convention, National, supports clerical 

marriage, 594 

Convents (see Monachism). 
Converts from Catholicism, marriage 

of, 499, 500 

Convocation of 1547 approves of cleri- 
cal marriage, 472 
of 1554 enforces celibacy, 480 
of 1557, its legislation, 485 
Coptic Church, customs of, 92 
Corella, affair of, 572 
Corruption of laity by clergy, 

265, 350, 518, 548 
Cosmo of Prague, case of, 245 

Cossa, Balthazar, his crimes, 343 

Cotta, Landolfo, seeks archbishopric of 

Milan, 209 

is excommunicated, 212 

his life threatened, 213 

his death, 215 

Councils, revision of their proceedings 

at Borne, 628 

of France, in 1797 and 1800, 595 

Countesses, bishop's wives rank as, 259 
Cournand, Abbe, proposes clerical mar- 
riage, 590 
his marriage, 591 
Courtenay of Canterbury on Wickliffe, 379 
Courtesans in Borne, necessity for, 550 
Court of Augmentations, the, 454 
Courts, mixed, for married priests, 257 
Cowl, Luther's wearing of the, 421 
Cows as source of episcopal revenue, 297 
Cox, Bishop, on Q. Elizabeth's Injunc- 
tions, 492 
Cozza, Card., on abuse of confessional, 575 
Cranach, Lucas, his portraits of Catha- 
rine von Bora, 425 
Cranmer on immunity for adultery, 447 
intercedes for Thomas Patmore, 462 
urges priestly marriage on Henry 

VIII., 463 

opposes the Six Articles, 467 

his marriages, 469 

encourages priestly marriage, 472, 473 

prepares the Forty-two Articles, 475 

his children claimed as slaves, 190 

Creed of Piers Ploughman, 352 

on Carmelites, 353 

on sacerdotal powers, 355 

on Franciscans, 376 

Cremona, reform of priesthood in, 217 

Cromwell, bribes tendered to, 454, 460 

he favors priestly marriage, 463 

he mitigates the Six Articles, 470 

his fall, 471 

Crossed-Friars, case of Abbot of, 457 



INDEX. 



653 



Culdees, 299 

their disappearance, 300 
Cullagium (see Licenses). 

Culm, Svnod of, in 1745, 562 

Cumad espuc, or virgin bishop, 295 

Cunegunda, St., her asceticism, 176 

Cunha, Rod. a, on solicitation, 571 

Cunibert of Turin, laxity of, 203 

Cuno of Ratisbon, 184 
Cuthbert of Canterbury reforms Saxon 

Church, 164 
Cuthbert of London prohibits the Beg- 
gars' Petition, 453 
Cuyck, Bish., on corruption of Church, 557 
Cynog, Book of, priestly marriage in, 294 
Cyprian, St., on vows of continence, 41, 42 
on martyrdom and virginity, 46 
Cyril, St., his use of monachism, 106 
Cyrillus converts Bohemia, 244 



DABRALIS of Spalatro, degradation 

of, 188 

Daimbert of Sens, his negligence, 263 
Dalmatia, priestly marriage in 10th 

century, 149 

in 11th century, 188 

relaxation of canons in, 204 

enforcement of celibacy in, 250 

Dalmatia, Synod of, in 1194, 250 

Damasus I. asserts sacerdotal celibacy, 64 

on marriage of nuns, 103 

Damasus II., his pontificate, 187 

Damhouder, Josse, on character of 

clergy, 557 

Damiani, St. Peter, his early career, 186 

his character, 193 

on troubles of abbots, 154 

he urges Clement II. to reform, 185 

and Leo IX., 188 

his Liber Gomorrhianus, 188 
is forced to leave his retreat in 

1057, 192 
on sacraments of sinful priests, 195 
he stigmatizes wives of priests, 196 
he endeavors to reform the prelates, 198 
he confutes the Tuscan chaplains, 199 
on election of Cadalus, 200 
on heresy of sacerdotal marriage, 201 
his continued efforts, 202 
his motives and arguments, 204 
his mission to Milan, 213 
Damnation for dissidence on celibacy, 640 
Dampierre, case of the, 323 
Dancing mania, cause assigned to, 351 
Danes, effect of their incursions, 139 
Danes, Pierre, his repartee at Trent, 413 
Darius, Silvester, papal collector, 417 
Daughters (see Children). 
Davanzati, Bishop, favors clerical mar- 
riage, 583 
Daviaux of Bordeaux prohibits cleri- 
cal marriage, 597 
David I., his reforms, 300 
Dax, Council of, in 1585, 560 
Daylight, confessions only to be heard 

during, 574 

Deaconesses, ordination of, forbidden, 60 

their marriage punished, 96 



Deacons allowed to marry, 39 

their marriage forbidden, 86 

Deans of Friesland, 254 

Death penalty for marrying a nun, 100 

for marriage under Six Articles, 468 

for celibacy in 1793, 593 

Debra, Abbe, case of, 635, 637 

Decretals, False, on clerical chastity, 136 

Decretum Gratiani, compilation of, 317 

denies apostolic origin of celibacy, 28 

De la Croix, deputy, on unmarried 

priests, 592 

De la Salle, Abbe, 617 

Demeter, worship of, in Athens, 50 

Democratic element in the Church, 226 
Denis, St., mistaken relics of, 217 

Denmark, position of concubines in, 197 
enforcement of celibacy in, 253 

Dens, Peter, on Italian morality, 631 

Denunciation, duty of, by seduced 

women, 576, 633 

Denunciations, Edict of, 569 

Desforges on clerical marriage, 582 

Desiderius of Monte Casino, 180 

Devonshire rebels demand the Six Ar- 
ticles, 469 
Devotees permitted to return to the 

world, 41, 97 

Diabolic possession of priests' wives, 235 
Diaconate, women admitted to, 60 

Diaz de Luco,on dissolution of marriage, 317 
on concubinage, 517 

on abuse of confessional, 568 

Diego Gelmirez, his reforms, 305 

Diet, German, complaints of, in 1510, 411 
Diet of Hungary, in 1498, 401 

Diether of Mainz, case of, 412 

Digami, ordination of, forbidden, 

37, 86, 89, 123 

their prevalence in British Church, 159 

in 10th century, 148 

condemned by Council of Spalatro, 149 

ineligible in Anglo-Saxon Church, 162 

recognition of, in 11th century, 202 

not allowed in Milan, 210 

condemned in Hungary, 249 

condemned by some of the German 

reformers, 426 

Digamy, concubines do not count in, 349 

rule of, ridiculed by Luther, 418 

Dilapidation of church propertv, 

123, 145, 147 
Dimitri of Dalmatia assumes the crown, 250 
Dingolfing, Council of, in 772, 135 

Dionysius of Corinth on asceticism, 34 

Dionysius, King, founds Order of Jesus 

Christ, 365 

Disabilities of married priests, 294 

Dispensations, papal, evil influence of, 397 

sale of, 321, 322, 345, 398, 516, 517, 522 

power of, debated, 407 

for unchastity, 131 

for marriage, sale of, 522 

for married priests, 442 

from confession, 428 

from vows of chastity, 535, 642 

refused by Pius IX., 611 

in favor of priests' children, 

505, 516, 549 



654 



INDEX. 



Divorces of married priests in England, 

470, 478 
Dogma, celibacy, a matter of, 641 

Dollinger and the Old Catholic move- 
ment, 604 
Dominicans, influence of, 375 
admitted to France in 1840, 614 
Donati, Girolamo, attempts to murder 

St. Charles, 551 

Donatist heresy condemned, 107 

revived by Theodore of Canterbury, 162 

by Nicholas II., 194 

by Gregory VIL, 227 

by Innocent II., 246 

condemned by Lucius III., 195 

and by St. Anselm, 288 

revived by the heretics, 

368, 374, 379, 383 
Doringk on sale of indulgences, 397 

Dorothea of Denmark, marriage of, 434 
Dortmund, Council of, in 1005, 155 

Down, St. Malachi's episcopate of, 296 

Dracontius, case of, 58 

Dress, clerical, regulated at Constance, 391 
Drogo of Terouane persecutes Watten, 260 
Droit de marquette, 354 

Dualism in Manichseism, 43 

of the Albigenses, 208, 367 

Dublin, Councils of, in 1186 and 1217, 298 
Du Fail, Noel, on clerical corruption, 561 
Dumonteil, case of, 600, 641 

Dunbar, Bishop, his immorality, 503 

Dunstan, St., takes the vows, 166 

his miraculous preservation, 171 

Dupanloup, Bishop, on the Syllabus, 642 
Du Pin, Louis Ellies, on clerical mar- 
riage, 581 
Duprat, Cardinal, his efforts at reform, 515 
Durand, William, advocates clerical 

marriage, 405 

Durham, Council of, in 1220, 288 



"PADMEB, on results of celibacy, 278 

*•* East Anglia, defence of monas- 
teries in, 170 
Eastern church, divergence of, 83 

its rules as to celibacy, 86 

its monachism, 106 

Easter, different computations of, 161, 163 
Ebionirr, or Poor Men, 27 

accused of immorality, 34 

Ebrard, his history of Watten, 260 

Ecclesiastical procedure, immunity 

caused by, 140 

Ecclesiastics, children of (see Children). 

immorality of (see Morals). 
Ecgberht of York, his Penitential, 163 
Eck, Dr., his conference with Melanch- 

thon, 440 

Edgar the Pacific, penitence imposed 

on, 167 

his reformatory zeal, 169 

Edict of Denunciation, priestly mar- 
riage in, 536 

solicitation in, 569 

Edinburgh, Council of, in 1549, 504 

in 1559, 505 

Edith, Queen of Edward the Confessor, 175 



Edmund I. on immorality of priests, 166 
Education, monastic influence on, 

358, 616-21 
secularization of, in France, 623 

Edward and Guthrun on immorality 

of clerks, 166 

Edward the Martyr supports Dunstan, 170 
Edward the Confessor, his virginity, 175 
Edward, Bishop of Scaren, 279 

Edward VI., his accession, 472 

his funeral services, 477 

Egara, Council of, in 614, 80 

Eggard of Sleswick, his fate, 402 

Eggs, punishment for eating, in Lent, 511 
Egypt, purity required of priests, 50 

neglect of celibacy in, 85 

Egyptian monachism, commencement of, 97 
Ejection of married priests, 594 

Elect, Manichsean, 46 

Election of popes limited to Roman 

clergy, 200 

Eleuchadio, Abbot of Fiano, 180 

Elfhere of Mercia supports the married 

priests, 170 

Elfritha, her intrigues against Edward, 170 
Elizabeth, Queen, ber hesitation as to 

priestly marriage, 487 

her assent to it, 488 

her continued repugnance, 489, 493 
her insolence to Mrs. Parker, 491 

her Injunctions of Ipswich, 492 

Elna, Council of, in 1027, 303 

Elphege of Winchester and St. Dun- 
stan, 166 
Elvira, Council of, in 305, on digami, 37 
celibacy introduced by, 50 
on morals of nuns, 99 
Emancipation of nuns in 1523, 425 
Emancipatore Cattolico, the, 606 
Einbden, Count of, promotes marriage 

of nuns, 435 

Embrun, Council of, in 1727, 626 

Emanuel, King, grants marriage to 

military orders, 365 

Emo of Wittewerum on priestly mar- 
riage, 254 
Empire, Roman, licentiousness under, 32 
Emser, Jerome, his epithalamium on 

Luther, 426 

Encratitians, heresy of, 33, 44 

Encyclical, papal, Mirari vos, 601 

Qui pluribus, 602 

Incredibili afflictamur, 609 

Neminem latet, 611 

Encyclicals of Leo XIII. on civil mar- 
riage, 605 
Enforcement of celibacy in 4th century, 

67-82 
by Gregory I., 123 

in 8th century, 131 

attributed to Gregory VIII., 224 

difficulties attending it, 229 

in 12th century, 245 

in Bohemia, 246 

in Germany 247 

in Hungary, 249 

in Poland, 251 

in Sweden, 252 

in Denmark, 253 



INDEX. 



655 



Enforcement of celibacy in France, 255 
in Normandy, 257 

in Flanders, 261 

by Calixtus II., 268 

in England, 273 

in Ireland, 296 

in Scotland, 300 

in Spain, 304 

by Innocent III., 327 

finally successful, 330 

by Henry VIII., 468 

by Queen Mary, 480 

by Council of Trent, 536 

after the Terror, 595 

Engelheim, Council of, in 948, 149 

England, disorders caused by Anglo- 
Saxon priests, 147 
Saxon period, 159 
celibacy at first enforced, 162 
introduction of marriage in 

9th century, 166 

disorders in 10th century, 167 
reformation attempted, 168 

its failure, 172 

church under Cnut the Great, 174 
under Edward the Con- 
fessor, 176 
position of concubines in, 197 
heresy in 1166, 207 
enforcement of celibacy in, 271 
marriage still prevalent in 13th 

century, 285 

hereditary benefices, 272, 281, 282, 285 
excitement caused by introduction 

of celibacy, 289 

priestly marriage becomes obso- 
lete, 291 
delay in enforcing the canons, 

318, 320 
marriage of priests' children, 338 

Hali Meidenhad, 347 

Begghards in, 378 

Wickliffe and Lollardry, 379 

demoralization in 15th century, 

394, 399 
restrictions on papal power in 

1517, 417 

the reformation in, 444 sqq. 

Dr. Geddes's modest apology, 584 

case of Shaw v. Starr and Ken- 
nedy, 611 
Council of Westminster in 1852, 626 
English bishops in Sweden, 278 
priests in Ireland, 298 
Enham, Council of, in 1009, 172 
Eon de l'Etoile, 371 
Epaone, Council of, in 513 60 
in 517, 80 
Ephraem Syrus on Manichseism, 44 
Epiphanius on Ebionites, 27, 34 
his Manicheean tendencies, 48 
on agapetse, 54 
on female ministration, 60 
on the Antidicomarianitarians, 69 
on non-observance of celibacy, 84 
on temporary nature of vows, 97 
Episcopissa, 152 
Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum, 

413, 414, 415 



Erasmus on religious immorality, 356 

his relation to the reformation, 414 

on indulgences, 417 

on priestly mai-riage, 432 

on abuse of confessional, 567 

Erchenbald on infanticide, 137 

Erfurt, Synod of, in 1074, 231 

Eriberto of Milan, his episcopate, 208 

Erlembaldo, St., popular chief of Milan, 209 

assumes leadership of Paterins, 215 

his death, 219 

Ermeland, Synod of, in 1497 402 

in 1577, 562 

Ernest of Magdeburg, his cynicism, 398 

Erskine, Lord, characterized by Knox, 508 

Escobar, his casuistry, 578 

d'Espeisses, President, on Italian 

morals, 552 
d'Espense, Claude, on virginity of the 

Virgin, 69 

on clerical morality, 559 

Essenes, asceticism of, 25 
Ethelred the Unready, state of England 

under, 171 
Ethelwold of Winchester, his reform- 
ing zeal, 168 
Eucharist, modified by Manichaeism, 44 
Eucherius, St., his vision, 130 
Eugenius II. on concubinage, 196 
Eugenius III. dissolves marriage of 

priests,^ , 315 

convicts Eon de l'Etoile, 372 
Eugenius IV. permits marriage to 

Knights of Calatrava, 364 

orders Council of Ba!e dissolved, 395 

Eulalius condemns Eustathius, 61 

Euphronius of Autun, 79 

Euphronius of Tours, 119 

Euron, Abbey of, its reform, 264 

Eusebius condemns priestly marriage, 51 

Eustathius, heresy of, 61 

Eutychianism of monastic order, 107 

Evangelical Doctor, Wickliffe the, 382 

Evenus of St. Melanius, 259 

Evreux, Synod of, in 1576, 560 

Excalceati, heresy of, 33 

Excommunication, effectiveness of, 134 

Exemptions conferred on ecclesiastics, 99 
Exeter, Bishop of, on children of priests, 286 

case of subdeacons of, 320 

Expilly on number of French clergy, 593 

Expulsion of monks in early times, 101 

Exuperius, St., favors Vigilantius, 71 



UABKE, Bishop, of Montreal, 613 

*- Fah-Hian, his account of Budd- 
hist monachism, 95 
Faith, celibacy as a point of, 515,536,603,640 
clerical marriage as a point of, 490 
False Decretals on clerical chastity, 136 
Faricius of Abingdon, case of, 227 
Fasting in penance, 160 
Fauchet of Bayeux on clerical mar- 
riage, 594 
Faustinus on separation of wives, 74 
Faustus the Manichsean, 46, 75 
F6camp reformed by Richard the 
Fearless, 155 



656 



INDEX. 



Feini, civilization of, 295 

Felix of Nantes, ease of, 119 

Fellows, University, celibacy of, 492 

Felony, priestly marriage is, in Six 

Articles, 468 

Ferdinand (Emp.) asks use of cup for 

Bohemia, 384 

demands a general Council in 1522, 424 
tolerates Protestantism, 439 

on German monasteries, 452 

on clerical immorality, 519, 529 

his demands suppressed at Coun- 
cil of Trent, 535 
asks for clerical marriage, 530-2, 539 
Ferdinand of Aragon supports Ximenes, 402 
Ferdinand IV. (Naples), his reforms, 583 
enacts civil marriage, 607 
Fermo, Council of, in 1726, 626 
Ferrers, Alex., case of, 502 
Ferry of Orleans, his murder, 334 
Ferry, Jules, on political influence of 

monachal education, 618 

enforces laws against unauthorized 

orders, 621 

his secularization of education, 623 
Feudal system, independence of, 182 

tenure by chastity, 153 

Fifteenth century, demoralization of, 388 
Fischer, Fred., punished for marrying, 424 
Fish, Simon, his Beggars' Petition, 453 
Flamen Dialis, second marriage for- 
bidden to, 36 
Flanders, enforcement of celibacy in, 259 
case of Bossaert d'Avesnes, 323 
character of post - Tridentine 

church, 557 

troubles arising from solicitation, 576 

Florence, Synod of, in 1057, 191 

in 1573, 553 

congregation of bishops in 1787, 587 

Florentines reject their bishop in 1060, 195 

Fluviano, Antonio, Grand Master of 

St. John, 366 

Focaria, introduction of the term, 283 

Fontaneto, Council of, in 1058, on 

priestly marriage, 212 

Forcheim, Diet of, in 1077, 236 

Formal vows dissolve marriage, 321 

Formulas, insincerity of Latin, 642 

Forret, Thomas, burnt, 510 

Forster, Andreas, his defence of celi- 
bacy, 583 
on celibacy as a point of faith, 641 
Fortescue, Sir John, on priestly mar- 
riage, 318 
Fox of Winchester unable to restore 

discipline, 447 

France, celibacy first introduced in 384, 64 
difficulty in enforcing it, 76 

popular desire for it, 77 

constant legislation required, 79 

morals of, in 4th century, 81 

monasticism in 7th century, 115 

state of church under the Mero- 
vingians, 118 
in 8th century, 128 
in 9th century, 136 
in 10th century, 146, 152, 155 
Council of Bourges in 1031, 179 



France, council of Rheims in 1049, 189 
heresies in 11th and 12th centuries, 

207, 367-75 
enforcement of celibacy in, 255 

morals of clergy in 12th century, 264 
persistence of priestly marriage, 

270, 318, 319, 320 
efforts of Maurice de Sully, 322 

results of celibacy, 331 

demoralization in 15th cent., 394, 399 
heresy of Jean Laillier, 408 

Concordat of 1516, 428 

the Sorbonne refuses a conference 

with Melanchthon, 440 

condition of church in 16th cent., 515 
clerical marriage asked of Council 

of Trent, 533, 641 

reception of Council of Trent re- 
fused, 546 
character of post-Tridentine 

church, 559 

abuse of confessional, 570, 576 

case of la Cadiere, 579 

question of marriage reopened in 

18th century, 581 

corruption in 18th century, 585 

the church during the Revolution, 

588-95 
National Council in 1797, 595 

clerical marriage under the Con- 
cordat, 596-8 
varying policy as to clerical mar- 
riage, 599-601 
monachism in modern times, 613-6 
education by monachism, 617-20 
reaction against monachism, 621-3 
morality of clergy in, 625 
modern councils held in, 626, 633 
prosecution of clerical offenders, 635-6 
position of clergy in, 637 
Francis, St., of Assisi, on obedience, 103 
his annual visits to Purgatory, 335 
his exaltation of poverty, 376 
Francis de Sales, St., on choice of con- 
fessor, 578 
Francis I. favors League of Schmal- 

kalden, 438 

Melanchthon submits Articles to 
him, 440 

Franciscans, their corruption, 

350, 352, 353, 376 
their influence, 375 

reformed by Ximenes, 402 

their resistance to Henry VIII., 451 
of Bavaria on abuse of confes- 
sional, 570 
Fraticelli, the, 376 
Frederic of Lorraine created pope, 192 
Frederic I. on sons of clergy, 326 
his visit to Fulda, 404 
Frederic II. on Milanese heresies, 211 
on children of ecclesiastics, 335 
Frederic of Saxony protects married 

priests, 419 

acts as sponsor to child of priest, 422 

still considers himself a Catholic, 423 

Freres de la Sainte-Croix, 617-8 

Freres des Ecoles ChrStiennes, 617, 619-20 

Frerots, the, 376 



INDEX. 



657 



Fressanges, Mdlle., case of, 
Freysingen, Council of, in 1440, 
Frideswide, St., treatment of her re- 
mains, 
Friesland, enforcement of celibacy in, 
Fringe, John, case of, 
Fritzlar, Council of, in 1246, 
Froude, Mr., on Henry VIII. and the 

Six Articles, 
Fructuosus, St., of Braga, his rule, 
Fuero Juzgo, clerical celibacy in, 
Fuess, Wolfgang, his marriage, 
Fulbert of Chartres on military bishops, 
Fulbert of Paris and Heloise, 
Fulda, Abbey of, its strictness, 
Future life, unknown to early Jews, 
doctrine of, introduced, 



GxlEIDHIL, conversion of the, 
Gall, St., his labors, 
Galli, castration of, 
Gallicia, Council of, on discipline, 

first nunnery in 1129, 
Gangra, Council of, in 362, 
Gardiner, Bishop, celebrates mass for 
Edward VI., 
sits in judgment on married 

bishops, 
scandals concerning him, 
Gaudin, Abbe, defends clerical mar- 
riage, 
his marriage, 
Gaul (see France). 
Gauthier of Ponthoise, 
Gea Eurysternus, priestesses of, 
Gebhardt of Constance, election of, 
Gebhardt of Eichstedt created pope, 

184, 
Gebhardt of Ratisbon, 
Gebhardt of Salzburg ordered to en- 
force celibacy, 
Gebizo enforces celibacy in Dalmatia, 
Geddes, Dr., on celibacy, 
Geiasius I. on second marriages, 

on marriage of nuns, 
Geiasius of Cyzicus on Paphnutius, 
Genebaldus of Laon, case of, 
Genoa, civil marriage vaiid in, 
Geoffrey of Chartres fails in his re- 
forms, 
Geoffrey of Llanthony, case of, 
Geoffrey of Rouen enforces celibacy, 
Geoffrey of Tuscany, his chaplains, 
George of Saxony persecutes married 

priests, 
Gerard of Angoule*ine, case of, 
Gerard of Cambray on Manichseans, 208, 
Gerard of Florence created pope, 
Gerard of Lorsch, his inquiries, 
Gerard of Munster assists Friesland 

deans, 
Gerard of Nimeguen on clerical 

morality, 
Gerard of Sabina, his reforms, 
Gerbert of Aurillac on celibacy, 
Germain, his charter to Beze, 
Germany, virtue of Teutonic tribes, 
reforms attempted by Carloman, 



600 
396 

484 
254 
318 
337 

468 
115 
121 

422 
152 
269 
404 
21 
24 



159 

126 

50 

308 

307 

61 

477 

479 

486 

583 
591 

256 

50 

229 

191 

184 

227 
250 
584 

36 
110 

57 
119 
606 

265 

227 
268 
199 

419 
269 
369 
192 

148 

254 

429 
339 
157 
265 
82 
128 



154 

189 



207 



230 



the 
247, 
12th 

13th 



244 

318 

326 

336 
337 

340 
366 
375 

382 
382 
382 
392 



Germany, condition of church in 10th 
century, 148, 

Council of Mainz, in 1049, 
heresies in 11th and 12th cen- 
turies, 
enforcement of celibacy by Greg- 
ory VII., 

triumph of schism in 11th century, 241 
continuance of priestly marriage, 243 
rebellion of Henry V., 
impossibility of enforcing 

canons, 
hereditary priesthood in 

century, 
children of ecclesiastics, 
century, 
testamentary provisions for, 
condition of monachism, 15th 

century, 
Marian, or Teutonic Order, 
Waldensian heresy, 
the Hussites, 
Orthodox Brethren, 
Brethren of the Cross, 
Cardinal Branda's reforms, 
demoralization in 15th century, 

393, 400 
the Reformation, 410 

demoralization in the 16th century, 

429, 432 
success of the Reformation, 443 

morals of the monasteries, 452 

reforms attempted by Charles V., 

524-8 
corruption of the clergy, 

529-32, 542-3 
demand for clerical marriage, 530-44 
clerical marriage refused, 545 

post-Tridentine immorality, 548-56 
abuse of confessional, 570, 576 

demand for clerical marriage in 

18th century, 583 

in 19th century, 601, 604 

civil marriage, 605 

monachiom in Austria, 615 

modern councils held in, 626-7, 633 
census of ecclesiastics, 630-1 

Geroch of Reichersperg on sacraments 
of sinful priests, 
on disregard of canons, 
Gerson on origin of celibacy, 
on abuse of confessional, 
on concubinage as a necessity, 
on clerical immorality, 
Gervilius of Mainz, case of, 
Gervinus of St. Riquier, 
Ghaerbald of Liege, his canons, 
Gieus de Robin et de Marion, 
Gilbert, papal legate in Ireland, 
Gilbert of Chichester on abuse of con- 
fessional, 

Gilbert de la Porree, condemnation of, 315 
Gildas, description of British clergy, 159 
Giles Cantor, his heresy, 
Giovanni Gualberto, St., 
Giraldus Cambrensis on origin of celi- 
bacy, 

on the Irish church, 297, 298 

his struggle for St. David's, 283 



195 
317 
29 
350 
353 
389 
130 
176 
135 
351 
296 

350 



3S5 
183 



28 



4^ 



658 



INDEX. 



Giraldus Cambrensis on married priests, 285 
on dispensations, 322 

he deprecates celibacy, 325 

on residence of relatives, 332 

G-irard, Father, case of, 579 

Girona, Council of, in 517, 80 

in 1068, 303 

in 1078, 304 

in 1197, 373 

in 1257, 1274, 310 

Glastonbury, Abbey of, 167 

Gloucester, Augustinians of, their sup- 
pression, 457 
See of, created, 460 
Gnesen, clerical marriage in, 251 
Synod of, in 1577, 555 
Gnostics, heresy of, 33, 43 
Gobel of Paris, 594, 599 
Godric, St., case of, 111 
Godsons of bishops, wer-gild for, 162 
Godstow, the last of English abbeys, 459 
Golias Episcopus, 279 
Gomorrhianus Liber, 188 
Gonsalvo, Reginaldo, on solicitation, 569 
Goodacre, Anne, case of, 512 
Goslar, Manichaeism at, in 1052, 207 
Gotefrido of Tuscany installs Victor II., 191 
Gotefrido, Archbishop of Milan, 218 
Gotfrid of Wurtzburg, his will, 337 
Goths, Spanish, their immorality, 120 
Grace, the Pilgrimage of, 455 
Gran, Synod of, in 1099, 249 
in 1382, 1450, 1480, 401 
in 1858, 627 
Grandchildren cause ineligibility to 

episcopate, 87 

Grandier, Urban, case of, 581 

Gratian on origin of celibacy, 28 

on dissolution of priestly marriage, 317 
on nature of anathema, 640 

Gratian of Rouen on clerical marriage, 594 
Great Malvern, prior of, his offer, 454 

Greece, influence of, on the Jews, 25 

Greek church, its divergence from 

Rome, 83 

its rules as to celibacy, 86 

its present customs, 91 

tolerated by Rome, 327, 328, 640 

abuse of confessional in, 577 

of Bohemia, 244 

Gregoire of Blois, 598 

Gregory I. on marriage, 47 

his monastic reforms, 113 

his enforcement of celibacy, 122 

forged epistle of, 137 

his conversion of England, 161 

on indissolubility of marriage, 314 

legend related by him, 349 

Gregory II. forbids marriage of nuns, 127 

his advice to Boniface, 128 

on sacraments of sinful priests, 195 

Gregory VI. purchases the papacy, 184 

miracle at his obsequies, 187 

Gregory VII. condemns the story of 

Paphnutius, 56 

condemns the epistle of St. Ulric, 150 
adopts the heresy condemned at 

Gangra, 61 

accompanies Leo IX. to Rome, 187 



Gregory VII., his increasing influence, 191 
his character and aims, 193 

his activity under Nicholas II., 196 
he refuses ordination to illegiti- 
mates, 205 
his mission to Milan, 213 
his excommunication, 219 
he urges Erlembaldo to perse- 
vere, 220 
his exertions in Lucca, 222 
his election as pope, 223 
his enforcement of celibacy, 227 
his action in Dalmatia, 250 
in France, 256 
in Normandy, 258 
in Britanny, 259 
overlooks England in his reforms, 271 
his efforts in Spain, 304 
his death, 239 
enforcement of celibacy attributed 

to him, 224 

legends concerning him, 226 

results of his theocracy, 345 

his doctrine revived by the heretics, 

368, 374, 379, 383 
Gregory VIII. prevents abolition of 

celibacy, 325 

Gregory IX. on Neapolitan clergy, 335 
Gregory X. on corrupting influence of 

prelates, 351 

deposes Henry of Ligge, 336 

Gregory XIII. complains of married 

priests, 554 

Gregory XV. on abuse of confessional, 569 
Gregory XVI. represses clerical mar- 
riage, 601 
Gregory of Nazianzum on priestly mar- 
riage, 58 
Gregory of Tours on nominations of 

bishops, 118 

on enforcement of celibacy, 120 

Gregory of Vercelli, case of, 190 

Grey-Friars of Perth, their luxury, 509 
Grillandus, case reported by, 431 

Grindal, Archbishop, revives the Ni- 

cene canon, 494 

on position of married clergy, 496 

Grosseteste, Robert, his reforms, 292 

on papal court, 342 

Guala, Cardinal, constitutions of, 332 

Gualo of Paris, his uncertainty, 263 

Guarino of Modena, oath of chastity 

required by, 153 

Guastalla, Council of, in 1106, 244 

Guibert de Nogent, case of, 262 

Guiberto of Ravenna on concubinage, 238 
his death, 242 

Guido, Cardinal, enforces celibacy in 

Austria, 251 

and in Denmark, 253 

Guido di Valate appointed to See of 

Milan, 209 

penance imposed on him, 214 

is driven from Milan, 216 

resigns the archbishopric, 218 

Gulielmus Appulus on Nicholas II., 197 

Gunzo Grammaticus, 148 

Gwentian code on sons of priests, 294 

Gyrovagi, 109 



INDEX 



659 



TJAARLEM, Synod of, in 1564, 554 

-"- Habit, monastic, salvation insured 

by, 335 

Hali Meidenhad, 286. 347 

Halifax, Council of, in 1868, 627, 633 

Hamburg, reform undertaken at, 189 

Council of, in 1406 335 

Hamerer, Dr., on clerical corruption, 557 
Hamilton, Patrick, the Scottish proto- 

martyr, 506 

Hamilton, Catherine, her escape, 506 

Hamilton, Archbp., his character, 503, 505 
Hanno of Cologne, his canonization, 201 
Hardouin of Angers on morals of clergy,394 
Heads of colleges, position of their 

wives, 495 

Helena of Adiabene, 22 

Heliodorus of Trica, rigor of, 86 

Helisacar, Abbot, strict rules of, 404 

Heloise reforms Convent of St. Mary, 264 
denies her marriage, 269 

Helsen on clerical morality, 629 

on abuse of confessional, 633 

Helvidius, his heresy, 68 

Henke, bis edition of Calixtus, 583 

Henrician heretics, 370 

Henry II. (Emp.) on sons of priests, 155 
his asceticism, 176 

he enforces celibacy, 178 

Henry III. (Emp.), his desire for reform, 184 
urges Clement II. to reform, 185 

creates Bruno of Toul pope, 187 

makes Gebhardtof Eichstedtpope, 191 
persecutes heretics, 207 

appoints Guido di Valate, 209 

his death, 192 

Henry IV. (Emp.), accession of, 192 

offers made to him in 1061, 200 

his humiliation at Canosa, 219 

he expels Altmann of Passau, 230 

he protects married priests, 237 

but condemns priestly marriage, 239 
his triumph over the church, 241 

his final overthrow, 244 

Henry V. (Emp.), his successful rebel- 
lion, 244 
failure of negotiations with him, 267 
Henry I. (France), attempt to enforce 

celibacy under, 179 

Henry III. (France), his edicts of paci- 
fication, 500 
Henry I. (Eng.), his speculation in 

priestly marriage, 276, 280 

he enforces celibacy, 278 

Henry V. (Eng.), his persecution of 

Lollards, 381 

he attempts a reform, 394 

Henry VIII. favors League of Schmal- 

kalden, 438 

joins in suppression of monasteries, 448 
assumes supremacy of the church, 450 
completes suppression of monas- 
teries, 454 
is excommunicated by Paul III., 455 
his plans for use of monastic prop- 
erty, 459 
he maintains celibacy, 461, 466 
negotiates with German reformers, 466 
persecutes married priests, 467 



Henry VIII. is responsible for the Six 

Articles, 468 

objects to council held at Mantua, 520 
his death, 472 

Henry of Lausanne, the heretic, 370 

Henry III. of Liege, 336 

Henry of Ravenna adheres to Cadalus, 201 
Henry of Salzburg on priestly im- 
morality, 247 
Henry of Speyer, his remonstrances, 233 
Hepburn, Bishop, his immorality, 502 
Hera, celibacy of priestess of, 50 
Heracles, Thespian, celibacy of priests 

of, 50 

Heraudin of Chateauroux on clerical 

marriage, 594 

Hercules, Gaditanian, chastity of 

priests of, 50 

Hereditary tendency in Greek church, 91 

in Latin church of 10th century, 105 

its dangers, 225 

Hereditary priesthood allowed by 

Alex. II., 205 

Hereditary transmission, in Poland, 

13th century, 252 

in Friesland, 254 

in Normandy, 12th century, 258 

in Britanny, 12th century, 259 

in France, 12th century, 265 

forbidden by C. of Rheims in 1119, 267 
in England, in 11th century, 272 

in 12th century, 281, 282 

in 13th century, 285 

in Ireland, 296, 298 

among Culdees, 299 

in Spain, in 11th century, 304 

its persistence in 12th century, 

321, 322, 326 
condemned by IVth Lateran 

Council, 327 

persists in Livonia, 336 

in Pomerania, in 15th century, 402 
in 16th century, 505, 516 

in post-Tridentine church, 549 

Heresies, the, 367 

encouraged by clerical immorality, 334 
Heresy of sacerdotal marriage, 201 

of concubinarians condemned in 

1666, 558 

abuse of confessional is, 568 

opposition to celibacy is, 515, 603, 640 

Lutheran, justified by clerical 

corruption, 430, 514, 516, 518, 527, 

529, 548, 556 sqq. 

Heretics, persecution of, in 4th century, 70 

on corruption of priesthood, 352 

to be condemned, not contented, 536 

Herluca, her visions, 236 

Hermann, Bishop of Prague, 243 

Hermann von Wied of Cologne, 518 

Hermann, King, condemns priestly 

marriage, 239 

Heydeck, Baron of, his marriage, 434 

High Commission, Court of, 490 

Hilavion introduces monachism in 

Palestine, 97 

Hildebert of Le Mans, his efforts at 

reform, 264 

Hildebrand (see Gregory VII.) . 



660 



INDEX. 



Hildebrandine doctrine as to sinful 

priests, 224 

its treatment at Cambray, 236 

is enforced in 12th century, 246 

becomes obsolete in 12th century, 

248, 275 
is adopted by the heretics, 

368, 374, 379, 383 
is condemned in 15th century, 382 

but is enforced by laity, 392 

Hildesheim, Sjnod of, in 1652, 562 

Hilles, Richard, on the Six Articles, 471 
Himerius of Tarragona on celibacy, 65 

Tlincmar of Rheims on appellate juris- 
diction of Rome, 139 
endeavors to enforce the canons, 141 
Hiouen-Thsang on Buddhist monach- 

isui, 95 

Hippolytus of Portus on digami, 37 

Hof, immorality of priests of, 428 

Holland, reception of C. of Trent in, 553 
Homicide, unchastity punished as, 169 
Honorius (Emp.) on residence of women, 55 
he persecutes Jovinian, 70 

his edict of 420, 77, 79 

Honorius I. reproves Scottish clergy, 161 
Honorius II. enforces celibacy in Eng- 
land, 279 
morality of Rome under, 341 
Honorius III. endeavors to reform the 

Scottish church, 301 

confirms Order of St. James, 364 

Honorius II. (antipope), his election, 200 
Honorius of Autun on sacraments of 

sinful priests, 195 

Hooper, Bishop, on effect of the Six 

Articles, 471 

his visitation of Gloucester, 476 

Horn, Bishop, on position of married 

clergy, 496 

Home on married clerks, 291 

Hosius, Bishop, on celibacy, 529 

Hospitallers, the, 362, 366 

suppressed in England, 458 

Hostility to the church in 15th century, 

394, 395 
Hoya, Bishop of Munster, 548 

Hubert, Abbot, marriage of, 142 

Huesca, Council of, in 598, 80 

Hugh of Grenoble, his asceticism, 227 

Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, on clerical 

morals, 282 

Hugh of Lyons (Die) endeavors to 

enforce celibacy, 256 

is reproved by Gregory VII., 258 

his efforts in Britanny, 259 

Hugh, Archbishop of Rouen, charac- 
ter of, 155 
Hugh of Rouen on priestly marriage, 318 
he controverts heresy, 371 
Hugo of Constance, Zwingli's demand 

on, 421 

Hugo of Silva Candida at Council of 

Girona, 303 

Hugo, Cardinal, his speech at Lyons, 342 

Huguenots, priestly marriage among, 498 

toleration of their marriages, 499 

Humbert of Silva Candida on Greek 

errors, 191 



Humbert of Silva Candida on simony, 201 
Humphrey, Lawrence, on Richard 

Smith, 474 

on position of married clergy, 496 

Hungary, introduction of celibacy in, 248 

clerical immorality in 15th cent., 401 

discussion of celibacy in 18th cent., 584 

effort for clerical marriage in 1866, 603 

National Synod of, in 1822, 626 
Huss, John, on sacraments of sinful 

priests, 196 

his heresy, 382 

causes of its success, 395 

Hutten, Ulric von, 415 

Hyde, Council of, in 975, 170 

Hydroparastitaa, 44 

Hypatia, murder of, 106 



TBAS of Edessa, case of, 82 

-*- Iceland, rights of illegitimates in, 197 
Idelette de Bure, 498 

Ignatius, St., on abstinence from mar- 
riage, 32 
Illegitimates ineligible to priesthood in 

Coptic church, 93 

in Latin church, 205 

Illegitimacy of children of ecclesiastics, 86 

of Anglican clergy, 494, 496 

Immorality arising from vows of celibacy,41 

less reprehensible than marriage, 

145, 201, 627 
favors shown to, 320 

Immorality of church (see Morals). 
Immunity caused by appellate power 

of Rome, 139 

by forms of ecclesiastical prccedure,140 

for adultery by priests, 447 

Impostures of relics and miracles, 458 

Ina, King, Dooms of, 162 

Incest caused by celibacy, 

138, 278, 331, 555, 628 
common in Ireland, 297, 298 

price of absolution for, 428 

diminished by marriage, 182 

clerical marriage held to be, 628 

Indelibility of priesthood, 314 

India, influence of, on the Jews, 23 

Indians, relations of priests with, 563 

their hatred of Christianity, 564 

Indulgences in Manichaeism, 44 

marketable value of, 356 

sale of, 397 

opposition to, 417 

Infallibility decreed by Vatican Council,608 
Infanticide resulting from vows of con- 
tinence, 42, 100, 137 
tradition as to, 124 
Infessura, his character of Sixtus IV., 344 
Influence of celibacy on civilization, 

225, 357 

political, of modern monachism, 617-18 

Injunctions of Queen Elizabeth, 489 

Innocent of Rhodez, 118 

Innocent I. on priestly marriage of 

widows, 39 

makes no reference to Nicene canon, 55 
condemns the Bonosiacs, 68 

condemns Vigilantius, 72 



INDEX 



661 



Innocent I. enforces celibacy in Cala- 
bria, 76 
on marriage of nuns, 104 
Innocent II. dissolves marriage of 

priests, 815 

his enforcement of celibacy, 246 

Innocent III. enforces celibacy 

251, 252, 286, 327, 332 
reforms convent of S. Agatha, 265 

on hereditary benefices, 266, 286, 298 
condemns Bossaert d'Avesnes, 323 

decisions rendered by him, 324 

on digamy, 349 

confirms Order of St. James, 364 

converts heretics of Bosnia, 369 

his hesitation as to the mendicant 
orders, 375 

Innocent IV. enforces celibacy in 

Sweden, 253 

his judgment for d'Avesnes, 323 

permits hereditary priesthood, 336 

promotes Henry of Liege, 336 

his enmity to Grosseteste, 342 

Innocent VIII., his character, 345 

orders visitation of English mon- 
asteries, 399 
Inquisition, the, denounces priestly 

marriage, 556 

condemns heresy of concubinarians,558 
abuse of confessional confided to, 568 
its decrees on solicitation, 575 

its modern procedure in such cases, 633 
its tenderness to clerical delin- 
quents, 570 
case of Father Mena, 579 
its merciful treatment of nuns, 588 
its condemnation of Panzini, 602 
it defines celibacy a matter of 

faith, 603, 642 

its justification by the church, 618 
Insabbatati, 373 

hi8e.rm.ent4 clergy, 590 

Interdict laid on Milan, in 1074, 219 

Interim, recognition of marriage in the, 441 
Investitures, question of, 218 

Ipswich, injunctions of, by Q. Elizabeth, 491 
Ireland, character of its early church, 

76, 159 
enforcement of celibacy in, 295 

monastieism of its church, 297 

corruption introduced by the Eng- 
lish, 298 
priestly marriage in 16th century, 299 
suppression of monasteries in, 461 
morality of clergy in, 625 
modern Councils of, 626, 633 
Isabella of Castile supports Ximenes, 403 
Isidor of Pelusium on neglect of celi- 
bacy, 86 
Isidor, St., of Seville on monastic im- 
postors, 115 
Isidorian forgeries, relaxation of canon 

in, 136 

Isis, vow of continence made by, 50 

Italy, enforcement of celibacy in 381, 69 
resistance to celibacy, 76 

morals in 4th century, 81 

St. Benedict of Nursia, 111 

monachism reformed by Gregory l.,113 



Italy, state of church in 6th century, 122 
in 8th century, 127 

Charlemagne and theRoman clergy,135 
state of church in 10th century, 144 
Ratherius of Verona, 146, 150 

Atto of Vercelli, 147, 152 

Guarino of Modena and Alberic of 

Marsico, 153 

Silvester II., 157 

state of church in 11th century, 180 
San Giovanni Gualberto, 183 

Henry III. and the papacy, 184 

St. Peter Damiani, 185 

vain attempts at reform, 190 

Damiani and Hildebrand, 192 

Council of Melfi, in 1059, 197 

schism of the Lombard clergy, 200 
the antipope Cadalus, 201 

failure of the reform, 204 

the reform in Milan, 207-221 

troubles in various cities, 222 

Synod of Melfi, 242 

Calabria, priestly marriage in 12th 

century, 320 

Greek church in South, 328 

children of ecclesiastics, 335 

privileges accorded to concubines, 339 
morality of papal court, 341 

Savonarola, 386, 398 

demoralization in 15th cent., 393, 399 
in 16th century, 430, 549-52 

clerical marriage proposed in 18th 

century, 583 

corruption in 18th century, 586-8 

case of Panzini, 602 

civil marriage, 605 

followed by clerical marriage, 606 

suppression of monastic orders, 609 
Barnabite college at Monza, scan- 
dal of, 621 
modern councils held in, 626-7 
number of clergy in, 630 
morality of clergy, 631 

Ivo of Chartres on the canons, 263 

he reproves immorality, 264 

Izeshne sacrifice, 44 



TACOBINES, number of, 92 

^ Jainas, the, 35 
Jalikiah, its church independent of 

Rome, 302 

James of Jerusalem, a Nazirite, 25 

the brother of Jesus, 68 

James IV. (Scotland) protects Lollards, 501 

James V. (Scotland), his parliament of 

1542, 503 

James VI. (Scotland), his baptism, 505 

Jameson, Margaret, her marriage, 509 

Jane of Flanders, 323 

Janizaries, celibacy required of them, 19 

Jarnsida, rights of illegitimates in, 197 

Jean de Rely on morals of church, 399 

Jephthah, daughter of, 21 

Jerome, St., on the origin of celibacy, 28 

on Buddha, 34 

on Manichssism, 46 

on marriage, 47 

on agapete, 54 



662 



INDEX. 



Jerome, St., on heresy of Bonosus, 68 

of Jovinian, 70 

of Vigilantius, 72 

on clerical morality, 78 

on observance of celibacy, 85 

on early monachism, 97 

on immorality of nuns, 100 

on difficulty of virginity, 624 

Jerome of Prague on Huss, 382 

Jerusalem, effect of its capture, 326 

Jesuits, they protect their erring mem- 
bers, 579 
their influence on morality, 578 
their expulsion from New Grenada, 609 
they endeavor to enter France, 614 
their recent growth, 615 
their suppression in France in 1880, 621 
Jesus Christ, Order of, 365 
Jews, their relation to asceticism, 21-6 
their polygamy, 38 
Jodocus of Lubec as deputy of papal 

legates, 442 

John IV. on Anglo-Saxon monachism, 163 
John XII., his vices, 144 

John XIII. condemns priestly mar- 
riage, 150 
ejects canons of Winchester, 168 
John XXII. and the Fraticelli, 377 
his taxes of the penitentiary, 428 
John XXIII., bis crimes and deposition,343 
convokes Council of Constance, 390 
his sale of dispensations, 398 
John,King (Eng.),speculates on priests' 

wives, 283 

John of Alexandria, his strictness, 123 

John the Baptist, Essenism of, 25 

John of Crema, his misadventure, 279 

his Scottish reforms, 300 

John the Evangelist condemns the 

Nicolites, 34 

John of Frankfort independence of, 397 
John of Jerusalem, rule of, 101 

John of Leyden permits polygamy, 438 
John of Liege, his murder, 336 

John of Lisieux fails in his reforms, 265 
John Merlaw of Fulda relaxes the rules, 404 
John of Nicklaushausen, his heresy, 405 
John of Oberwesel, 407 

John of Pima., 378 

John of Rouen enforces celibacy, 256 

John of Salisbury reforms his canons, 265 
John of Saxony, his treatment of mon- 
asteries, 435 
John of Schweidnitz, his death, 378 
John of Utrecht reforms the nunneries, 340 
Jonas, Justus, on Luther's marriage, 425 
Joseph II. (Emp.), bis reforms, 583 
Jovian on marriage of nuns, 100 
Jovinian on Manichaeism, 46 
his resistance to celibacy, 69 
Judah and Tamar, 21 
Judhael of Dol, his marriage, 259 
Julian (Emp.) on Syrian asceticism, 50 
Julian, Cardinal, legate to Ireland, 298 
Julius II. approves of Savonarola, 386 
Julius III. defends Savonarola, 386 
grants powers to Cardinal Pole, 478 
his bull of indulgence to England, 482 
he reconvokes the Council of Trent,521 



Julius III. on treatment of Lutherans 

at Trent, 521 

Julius of Wurzburg argues against 
clerical marriage, 535 

Junia the apostle, 60 

Junqua, Abbe, case of, 601 

Jurisdiction, appellate, effects of, 140 

temporarily surrendered, 334 

Jus primaa noctis 354 

Jus spolii enforced by Robert the Fri- 
sian, 260 

Justification by works, doctrine of, 115 

in Calvinism, 498 

in Scotland, 506 

Justin Martyr on morals of Christians, 33 
denounces second marriages, 36 

approves of mutilation, 40 

Justinian, legislation of, 86 

regulates monachism, 108 



TTATHERINE of Arragon divorced, 450 
•*■*■ Katz, his work on celibacy, 584 

Keledeus, or Culdee, 299 

Killore, John, burnt, 510 

King's College enriched by Henry VIII.,448 
Kirkaldy of Grange, 503 

Kirkham, Walter, of Durham, prohib- 
its marriage, 290 
Knade, James, first married priest of 

Reformation, 419 

Knox, John, his denunciation of Catho- 
lics, 506 
he justifies Beatoun's murder, 507 
his Book of Discipline, 508 
his disputation with Wynrame and 

Arbuckle, 510 

his confession of faith, 512 

Koch of Wiesbaden, case of, 601 

Kokkius, Doctor, on clerical morals, 396 

Kolderup-Rosenvinge, his text of 

Cnut's laws, 174 

Kopp, Leonhard, emancipates nuns, 425 
Krishna, similarity of. to Christ, 92 

Kyle, Lollards of, 501 



LACORDAIRE obtains admission of 
Dominicans, 614 

Lactantius condemns asceticism, 48 

reprobates monachism, 98 

Ladak, number of monks in, 95 

Ladislas II. introduces celibacy in 

Hungary, 248 

Laetitia, Madame, patroness of charita- 
ble orders, 613 
Lagreze on droit de marquette, 355 
Laillier, Jean, his heresies, 408 
Laity corrupted by the clergy, 265, 346, 
350, 429, 430, 518, 533, 586, 629 
in favor of priestly marriage, 252, 423 
in favor of celibacy, 235, 465, 496 
require pastors to keep concubines, 

310, 353, 388 
their assistance invoked bv the 
church, 194, 232, 256, 257, 261, 

559, 560 

their asceticism in 11th century, 241 

Lambert of Artois enforces celibacy, 262 



INDEX. 



663 



Lambertini, Countess, case of, 631 

Lanciski, Synod of, in 1197, 251 

Lands of Church in German Reforma- 
tion, 434, 437, 439 
in England, 454, 482 
in Scotland, 508 
in France, 589 
in Sardinia, 609 
in Italy, 610 
Lanfranc, moderation of his reforms, 

272, 273 
Langdon, case of Abbot of, 451 

Langdon, Rev. W. C, on clerical mor- 
ality, 632 
Langlande on foreign prelates, 290 
on venality of officials, 293 
on the church, 444 
Languedoc, Manichseism in, 208 
Lanssac, his instructions at Trent, 517 
on clerical marriage at Trent, 533 
Lanzo of Milan, 209 
Laodicea, Council of, in 352, 36, 60 
Laon, case of subdeacon of, 324 
La Reole, monks of, kill St. Abbo, 153 
Lasteyrie on clerical corruption, 585 
Lateran, first Council of, in 1123, 313 
second Council of, in 1139, 315 
fourth Council of, in 1215, 327, 567 
fifth Council of, in 1516, 413, 428 
Latimer, Bishop, concerned in bribing 

Cromwell, 454 

on unworthy promotions, 456 

his imprisonment, 469 

Latin clerks in Greek church, 329 

Laurentius Gallus, 349 

Lausanne, clergy of, drive out their 

bishop, 341 

popular complaints in 1533, 429 

case of clerical marriage in, 601 

Lawney and the Duke of Norfolk, 469 

Lay communion in both elements, 44 

wine withdrawn from, 45 

demanded by the Hussites, 384 

demands for it in 16th century, 

530, 536, 641 
conceded to and withdrawn from 
Germany, 541, 543 

Lazarists, 613-4 

Lead, value of, in English monasteries, 459 
League of Schmalkalden founded, 438 

Le Bas, number of ecclesiatics of France,593 
Lebret, President, absolves Girard, 580 
Legacies to church restricted, 63 

Legitimation of priests' children, in 

1552, 476 

under Elizabeth, 488 

letters of, in Scotland, 506 

Leibnitz, his negotiations with Bossuet, 582 

Leigh, Thomas, on morals of laity, 464 

Leighton, Dr., his report of monasteries,451 

Leith, Articles of, 511 

Le Mans, bishop of, the son of a priest, 205 

Synod of, in 1248, 350 

Leo I. on priestly marriage of widows, 39 

on communion in one element, 44 

he enforces celibacy, 76 

on virginity of nuns, 104 

on disregard of vows, 105 

on concubinage, 196 



Leo III. dispenses St. Swithin, 165 

Leo. VIII. permits ordination of 

priests' sons, 148 

approves statutes of St. Martin of 

Tours, 404 

Leo IX., his entry in Rome, 187 

he commences reform, 188 

endeavors to reform the Greek 

church, 191 

on priestly marriage in Lucca, 222 

his death and canonization, 190 

Leo X., his character, 413 

he honors Savonarola, 386 

is replied to by Diet of Augsburg, 416 

he excommunicates Luther, 418 

his efforts at reform, 428 

his thanks to Henry VIII., 463 

Leo XIII. denounces civil marriage, 605 

Leo and Anthemius, their laws on mo- 

nachism, 108 

Leo the Isaurian persecutes monks, 90 

Leo Marsicanus on Alberic, 153 

Leo the Philosopher, legislation of, 87 

forbids marriage in orders, 90 

on monachism, 109 

Leon, Council of, in 1114, 307 

Leonistae, the, 67 

Leopold of Tuscany endeavors to re- 
form nunneries, 573, 586 
Leptines, Synod of, in 743, 131 
Lerida, Council of, in 523, 80 
Leslie, Norman, murders Cardinal 

Beatoun, 503 

Levirate marriage among the Jews, 21 

Levites, hereditary functions of, 22 

Levitical rule of virgin marriage, 38 

maintained in Milan, 210 

Leyden, John of, 438 

Lhassa, number of monks in, 95 

Liber Gomorrhianus, 188 

Libya, married bishops in, 89 

Licentiousness better than marriage, 

145, 201, 628 

Licenses to sin, first allusion to, in 1080, 257 

sale of, in Denmark, 253 

condemned by Lateran Council, 327 

continued in England, 

278, 280, 284, 289, 293 
in France, 332 

in Germany, 337 

in Naples, 339 

condemned by Council of Bale, 396 
continued throughout 15th cen- 
tury, 312, 389, 401 
in 16th century, 

428, 432, 433, 462, 526, 528, 559 

Liege, Manichseism, in 1025, 207 

priestly marriage in 12th century, 247 

heretics in, 371 

Bishop of, on clerical corruption, 530 

Council of, in 1131, 246, 314 

in 1548, 526, 530 

Lignana, Girolamo, his attempt to 

murder St. Charles, 551 

Lillebonne, Council of, in 1080, 257 

Lima, Councils of, in 1552-1601, 563-5 

Limitation on vows in France, 613 

Lincoln, case of subdeacon of, 321 

Lindet of Evreux, his marriage, 591 



664 



INDEX. 



Link, Wences., his marriage, 422 

Lippomani condemns Orzechowski, 541 
Lisieux, case of archdeacon of, 349 

Council of, in 1055, 256 

Litchfield, Saxon Bishop of, 272 

visitation of diocese of, 452 

Livonia, hereditary priesthood in, 336 

Livres de Jostice et de Plet, 321 

Llorente on abuse of confessional, 

569, 572-3 

Lodi, turbulence of married priests at, 202 

Loi Falloux of 1850, 614, 617 

Lolhard, Walter, 377 

Lollards, the, 381 

of Kyle, 501 

Lombardo-Venitia, number of clergy in, 630 

Lombardy independent of Rome, 219 

submits to Rome, 221 

Lomenie of Sens, his marriage, 591 

London, Dr., his career, 457 

on false relics, 458 

on permission of marriage of nuns, 466 

on ejected monks, 469 

London, married priests deprived in 

1554, 478 

enumeration of married priests in, 489 
Council of, in 1075, 272 

in 1102, 273 

in 1108, 277 

in 1126, 279 

in 1129, 280 

in 1200, 288 

in 1237, 288 

in 1268, 291 

Lords, House of, delays priestly mar- 
riage, 472 
Loretto, Episcopal Convention of, in 

1850, 626 

Lorraine, Cardinal of, his instructions 

at Trent, 533 

endeavors to enforce chastity, 559 

Lothair (Emp.) aids to enforce celi- 
bacy, 246 
visits Eulda, 404 
Louis-ie-Debonnaire on monastic im- 
postors, 115 
his reforms, 136 
prohibits phlebotomy to monks, 138 
Louis-le-Gros, his charter to St. Corne- 
lius, 270 
Louis IX. arbitrates for the d'Avesnes, 323 
Louis XII. and relics of St. Denis, 217 
Louis XV. reforms monastic orders, 585 
his arrests of brothel-haunting 
priests, 586 
Louis-Philippe adverse to monachism, 614 
Louvain, University of, urges reform, 529 
Synod of, in 1556, 541 
in 1574, 561 
Loyola, his retormation of Spain, 517 
Luanus, monasteries founded by, 160 
Lucca, priestly marriage in, 222 
Lucius II. on hereditary priesthood, 281 
Lucius III. on sacraments of sinful 

priests, 195 

on hereditary benefices, 322 

confirms the Order of the Temple, 363 

condemns the Waldenses, 373 

Lucretia Borgia, 345 



Ludegna, Juan, his disputation on 

priestly marriage, 535 

Luna, Dona Agueda de, 572 

Lunden, Archbishop of, on priestly 

marriage, 252 

Lupus of Troyes on celibacy, 79 

Lupus, Christian, on Paphnutius, 57 

on Tridentine canons, 640 

Luther, his place in the Reformation, 413 

his ninety-five propositions, 417 

his gradual progress, 418 

he hesitates as to priestly marriage, 420 

he approves of priestly marriage, 422 

his marriage, 425 

his opinions on marriage, 426 

he opposes the Anabaptists, 438 

he fraternizes with Orthodox 

Brethren, 385 

he reprints Caraffa's " Concilium," 523 
Sir Thomas More's assault on him,440 
Lutheranism caused by clerical im- 
morality, 514, 516, 518, 527, 529 
its spread in Bohemia, 384 
Lutherans, the, adopt the Waldenses, 375 
they object to Council held at 

Mantua, 520 

their treatment at Trent, 521 

they decline further participation, 522 

Luxury, uses of, 358 

Lyons, Poor Men of, 373 

Lyons, effect of papal court on, 342 

suppression of unauthorized orders 

in, 622 

Council of, in 583, 80 

in 1274, 328, 336, 351 

in 1528, 515 

in 1850, 626 

Lyons, Huguenot Synod of, in 1563, 38, 499 



Lord, 



Anglican 

497 

86 

119 

80, 119 

173 

mis- 



MACAULAY, 
-M+ clergy, 

Macedonia,, celibacy enforced in, 
Macliaus of Britanny, case of, 
Macon, Council of, in 581, 
Maesse-begnes, wer-geld of, 
Magdeburg Centuriators, their 
take, 

Council of, in 1403, 

troubles of, in 1431, 
Mahavira, legend of, 
Mahue of S. Sulpice, case of, 
Maiden Bradley, prior of, his morals, 
Maillard, Olivier, his sermon 



162 
353 

395 

35 

592 

458 
399 



Mainardo, Card., his mission to Milan, 217 
Mainerio Boccardo, will of, 221 

Mainz, enforcement of celibacy in, 230 
revolt against Rodolf of Swabia, 236 
Diet of, in 1085, 239 

annates of, 412 

Archbishop of, asks for clerical 

marriage, 539 

Council of, in 888, 138 

in 1049, 189 

in 1075, 231 

in 1225, 337 

in 1261, 338, 376 

in 1527, 423 

in 1549, 528 



INDEX. 



665 



Majorian, laws of, respecting nuns, 105 
Malachi, St., his reforms, 296 

his death, 297 

Malatesta, Carlo, interferes with con- 
cubinage, 339 
Mallet, Abbe, case of, 635 
Malone, Malachi, on dispensations, 541 
Malta, Knights of, 362, 366 
suppressed in England, 458 
Manasses of Rheims, his violent meas- 
ures, 261 
Mancio of Chalons, his indecision, 142 
Manes, career of, 43 
Manfredonia, Council of, in 1567, 553 
Manichseism, influence of, 43 
indulgences and Eucharist in, 44 
revival of, in llth centurj, 207 
prevalent in Milan, 211 
opposed by St. Bernard, 331 
of Albigenses, 367 
Manigold of Veringen, case of, 235 
Mansfeld, married priest of, 419 
Mantua, Council of, in 1053, 190 
in 1067, 202 
Council of Trent to be held at, 519 
Mapes, Walter, his satirical verses, 289 
Mar Aba prohibits priestly marriage, 92 
Marcellin, Abb6, on droit de marquette,354 
Marcian (Emp.) restricts monachism, 107 
Marcion, heresy of, 33 
Marcus, heresy of, 33 
Margaret of Flanders, case of, 323 
Margaret of Parma delays reception 

of Council of Trent, 547 

Mariana on married clergy of Spain, 303 
Marian Order, 366 

Marien, frere, case of, 637 

Marillac, Bishop Charles de, on cleri- 
cal discipline, 559 
Marino, a married priest, 180 
Marino of Ostia condemns priestly 

marriage, 149 

Marisco, Adam de, 292 

Marozia, her power, 144 

Marquardo dei Susani on celibacy, 547 

Marquette, droit de, 354 

Marriage exalted by Christ, 26 

in Apostolic Constitutions and 

Canons, 48 

abstinence from, among early 

Christians, 32 

heresies condemning, 31 

orthodox condemnation of, 45 

depreciation of, by Chrysostom, 86 
comparative merit of, 46, 47, 318, 347 
abhorrence of, by Manichaeans, 43 

by Albigenses, 208, 367 

orthodox embarrassment concern- 
ing, 369 
disregard of, in llth century, 182 
in Ireland, 295, 297, 298 
Wickliffe's view of, 381 
permitted to those under vows, 100 
not dissolved by monastic vows, 114 
indissoluble in early church, 314 
dissolved by orders and vows in 

12th century, 313 

effect of vows upon, 321 

worse than licentiousness, 145, 201, G28 



Marriage, clerical, is incest, 628 

sacrament of, inferior to ordination,642 

of Martin Luther, 425 

of Albert of Brandenburg, 434 

of converts to Calvinism, 499 

in orders forbidden, 39, 77 

persisted in 80 

forbidden in the East, 86 

custom of Greek church, 89, 90 

permitted among Nestorians, 92 

anathematized at Trent, 536 

in Spanish military orders, 363, 364 

Marriage of abbots, Hungary, 15th 

century, 401 

Marriage of bishops, prohibited in 

orders, 39 

in 4th century, 58 

in Greek church, 87, 91 

practised in Africa, 89 

in Frankish Gaul, 119 

in Gothic Spain, 121 

in 8th century, 132 

in 10th century, 154, 155 

in llth century, 181, 189, 197, 198 
separated from their wives in 

Hungary, 249 

in Ireland, 295 

treatment of, under Mary, 479 

Marriage of deaconesses punished, 96 

Marriage of monks permitted in 4th 

century, 58 

forbidden by Justinian, 108 

and by Gregory I., 113 

St. Bernard on, 316 

common in 9th century, 139 

in 12th century, 324, 326 

in 14th century, 340 

in 15th century, 401, 403 

in Reformation, 420 

dispensations refused them, 442 

Marriage of nuns a capital crime, 100 

is binding, 103, 104, 105 

common in 5th century, 110 

in 7th century, 115 

in Merovingian France, 120 

in Gothic Spain, 121 

in Italy, in 8th century, 127 

forbidden in 8th century, 132, 135, 137 

common in 9th century, 139 

in 10th century, 163, 166 

in 14th century, 340 

in 15th century, 403 

in Reformation, 425, 435 

under Henry VIII., 466 

in France in 1581, 500 

in French Revolution, 593 

Marriage of priests in early church, 

27-30, 48 

restricted to single marriage, 37 

and with virgins, 38 

forbidden in orders, 39 

forbidden in Manichasism, 45 

and by Council of Elvira, 50 

but not by Council of Nicsea, 54 

first prohibition, in 385, 64 

prohibition gradually enforced in 

Western church, 66-82 

custom of Eastern church, 89 

common in Gothic Spain, 121 



44 



INDEX. 



Marriage of priests common in Italy 

in 6th and 8th centuries, 122, 127 
in Merovingian France, 119-20 

prohibited in 8th century, 133-5 

reappears in 9th century, 142 

common in 10th century, 

148, 150, 152, 155, 158 
in British church, 159 

in Saxon England, 167, 169, 172 

in Wales, 171 

universal in 11th century, 181 

in southern Italy, 197 

in Tuscany, 199 

creates a political party in 1061, 200 
becomes a heresy, 201 

struggle over, in Lombardy, 210-21 
persecution of, 234 

penalties inflicted on, 242 

in Bohemia, 245 

in Germany, 247 

in Hungary, 248-9 

in Dalmatia, 250 

in Poland, 251 

in Sweden, 252 

in Denmark, 253 

in Friesland, 254 

in France, 255, 270 

in Normandy, 256 

in Britanny, 259 

in Flanders, 260 

in England, 272-91 

in Wales, 294 

in Ireland, in 16th century, 299 

in Scotland, 299 

in Spain, 303 

delay in abrogating it, 305 

forl'idden by Alfonso the 

Wise, 308 

irrregular, continued, 311 

St. Bernard on, 316 

Gratian on, 317 

advocated by Alexander III., 325 

condemned by Wickliffe, 379 

allowed by Lollards, 381 

condemned by Hussites, 384 

allowed by Brethren of the Cross, 385 

and by Orthodox Brethren, 385 
advocated in 15th century, 405 

commencement of, in Reformation, 419 
demanded by Zwingli, 421 

accepted by Luther, 422 

favored by the people, 423 

persecuted by the church, 423 

recognized by the Interim, 441 

dispensations granted by Paul III., 442 
recognized by Transaction of Pas- 

sau, 443 

advocated in England in 1530, 461 
commencement of, in England, 462-5 
refused by Henry VIII., 461-4 

a capital offence under the Six 

Articles, 468 

permitted under Edward VI., 472 

popular repugnance for, 475, 476 

suppressed under Mary, 478 

admitted by Elizabeth, 488 

a matter of Anglican faith, 475, 490 
effects of its uncertainty on Angli- 
can clergy, 497 



Marriage of priests a matter of course 

in Calvinism, 498, 510 

dispensations for, sale of, 522 

demanded of Council of Trent, 529-33 
prevalence of, 531-2 

disastrous consequences to church, 535 
prejudged at Trent, 534-6 

asked for by German princes and 

prelates, 539-43 

condemned as heresy at Trent, 

536, 640-2 
papal dispensations for, 541 

refused by Pius IV., 545 

in post-Tridentine church, 554 

denounced by Inquisition, 556 

demand for, in 18th century, 582-4 
in French Revolution, 590-4 

under the Concordat, 596-8 

varying policy in France, 599-601 

attempted revival in modern times, 

601, 606 

accepted by Old Catholics, 604 

in the United States, 607 

Marriage of subdeacon valid, 324 

Marriage, civil, 605-7 

Marriage with Christ by taking the 

veil, 104 

Marriages, second, commanded by St. 

Paul, 96 

objected to, 33 

regarded as adulterous, 36 

forbidden to priesthood, 37 

St. Augustin on, 74 

legislation against, 86, 89 

in 11th century, 202, 210 

Married men, admission of, to orders, 76, 79 
Married nuns, divorce of, 480 

Married priests, their audacious de- 
mands in 8th century, 132 
their divorce, 470 
numbers ejected under Queen Mary,480 
penance inflicted on, 481 
not permitted to leave the church, 

424, 484 
enumeration of, in England, 489 

Marsico, priests of, defend their con- 
cubines, 339 
Marsiglio of Padua on confessional, 350 
"Marthas" of Franciscans, 353 
Martin I., his advice to Amandus, 126 
Martin V., his election, 391 
his favors to John XXIIL, 344 
condemns the Begghards, 377 
his attempts at reform, 392 
Martin, St., on marriage, 47 
Martin, case of, in 1817-21, 599 
Martin of Battle Abbey, 282 
Martin of Camin on clerical morale, 402 
tries to reform his clergy, 496 
Martin, St., of Leon, his dialectics, 371 
Martin of Marseilles, marriage of, 592 
Martin, Dr. T., at trial of Cranmer, 190 
his treatise on celibacy, 480 
Martyrdom, its comparison with vir- 
ginity, 46 
of English monks, 450 
Marullus on Innocent VIII., 345 
Mary, St., of Egypt, 98 
Mary of Guise, her policy, 507 



INDEX. 



667 



Mary, Queen, her obsequies of Ed- 
ward VI., 477 
her death, 486 
Mass, disputation on, Scotland, in 1560, 507 
Masses for the dead, copied from Maz- 

deism, 44 

maintained by Henry VIII., 454 

Masses of married priests to be rejected, 

194, 227, 246, 256, 274 
Massieu of Beauvais, his marriage, 591 
Massipia, legalized concubines, 197 

Materialism of Mosaic Law, 21 

Maternity, dissuasions from, 347 

Mathison, John, and the Anabaptists, 438 
Matilda, Countess, and married priests 

of Lucca, 222 

Matrimony, Tridentine canons on, 

534-6, 640-1 
Matthew Paris on Milanese heresies, 211 
Matthew of Salzburg, his attempted 

reforms, 518 

Matthias Corvinus on priestly morals, 401 
Maud of Ramsbury, 281 

Mauger of Rouen, his character, 156 

Mauleon, Mdlle. Desvieux de, 582 

Maultrot, his answer to Gaudin, 584 

Maurice of Saxony, 441, 443 

Maurice de Sully, powers granted to, 322 
Maurilio, St., of Rouen, 156 

Mauritanian nuns, case of, 104 

Maximilian II. asks for clerical mar- 
riage, 543 
his requests refused, 545 
Maya, mother of Buddha, 35 
Mayer, Dr., on clerical corruption, 557 
Mayer's dissertation on Cath. von Bora, 425 
Mazdeism, character of, 22 
its Messiah, 35 
its Izeshne sacrifice, 44 
Meat, abstinence from, not recom- 
mended, 48 
use of, forbidden by Manes, 43 
and by Albigenses, 208, 367 
Meaux, Bishop of, his propositions con- 
demned, 382 
Mechlin, regulation of confessionals, 574 
discussion as to solicitation in, 576 
clerical morals in, 628 
Synods of, in 1570 and 1607, 561 
Medicine, incompatibility of, with 

priesthood, 227 

Meinhard of Treves, misfortunes of, 248 
Melanchthon on Luther's marriage, 425 
prepares the Confession of Augs- 
burg, 436 
seeks conference with Sorbonne, 440 
argues with Henry VIII., 466 
remonstrates with him, 470 
Melchoir of Wurzburg on condition of 

clergy, 528 

Melfi, Council of, in 1059, 197 

in 1089, 242 

in 1284, 329, 339 

in 1597, 553 

Melisse, frere, case of, 637 

Melun, Assembly of, in 1579, 556 

Men of Intelligence, 385 

Mena, Father, case of, 579 

Menco, Abbot, on priestly marriage, 254 



Mendelsham, Vicar of, his marriage, 465 
Mendicant Orders, the, 375 

Mendicancy of Begghards condemned, 377 
Mendicancy disapproved by Wickliffe, 379 
forbidden in Reformation, 420 

Mendieta on Spanish colonial church, 564 
Merit, comparative, of virginity and 

marriage, 46, 47, 318, 347, 536, 641 

Merseburg, priestly marriage demand- 
ed by people of, 441 
Messiah, the, of Mazdeism, 35 
Methodius converts Bohemia, 244 
Metz, sons of priests ordained in, 154 
Council of, in 895, 138 
in 1604 and 1610, 562 
Mexico, Councils of, in 1555 and 1585, 

563, 665-6 
corruption of its church, 563-6 

Michelet on abuse of confessional, 573 

Milan, struggle over celibacy in, 207-221 
prevalence of Manichgeism in, 211 

its independence of Rome, 210 

its submission to Rome, 213, 221 

Synod of, in 1098, 221 

in 1565 and 1582, 553 

reforms of St. Charles Borromeo, 550-2 
Episcopal Convocation, in 1849, 626 
Military bishops in 10th and 11th cen- 
turies, 153, 180 
Military Orders, the, 362 
Military service enforced on monks, 99 
Mill, Walter, his trial, 510 
Milo of Rheims, case of, 129 
Minden, Dean of, miracle occurring to, 266 
Mingrat, Abb6, case of, 635 
Minims, corruption of, 562 
Minimum age for vows, 585, 587, 611 
for ordination, 624 
for resident women, 626 
Ministers, Calvinist, strictness of rules, 499 
Minors, irrevocable engagements by, 611 
Minucius, Felix, on morals of Christians,33 
on second marriages, 36 
Minuto, Cardinal, his mission to Milan, 217 
Mirabeau advocates clerical marriage, 590 
Miracles in support of celibacy, 

170, 236, 334 

by married priests, 180 

to enforce morality, 266 

false, 458 

Misnia, the Brethren of the Cross, 385 

priestly marriage in, 419 

Missionary work of monachism, 113 

Missions, abuse of confessional in, 578 

Missions Etrangeres, the, 614 

Mithraic worship in Rome, 43 

Mixed tribunal for married priests, 257 

Modena, trouble with married priests 

in, 222 

Molanus, his negotiation with Bossuet, 582 
Monachism, 94 

its Buddhist prototype, 95 

commencement of, 97 

originally temporary, 101 

rules of Greek church, 107 

difficulties of the West, 109 

Western, practical character of, 112 
rendered irrevocable by Gregory I.,113 
benefits of, 113 



668 



INDEX. 



Monachism, disorders of, under Carlo- 

vingians, 137, 139 

reforms in 10th century, 152 

in Irish church, 160, 295 

Anglo-Saxon, 163, 173, 176 

condition of, in France, 264 

in early Scottish church, 299 

degrading regulations of, 332 

influence of, 357 

demoralization in 15th century, 

340, 392, 393, 399, 403 
ridiculed by Erasmus, 415 

opposition to, in Reformation, 421 

position of, in Reformation, 437, 439 
overthrown by Wolsey, 447 

effort to enforce discipline, in 1549,526 
its description by Cassander, 543 

its abolition recommended, 523, 573 
its influence on solicitation, 573 

corruption of post-Tridentine, 562 

in Spanish Colonies, 565 

corruption in 18th century, 585, 586 
its abolition recommended, 587 

subjected to the State, in 1760, 585 
its modern vicissitudes, 608-21 

Monasteries, residence in, enforced in 

the East, 107 

not necessary in the West, 115 

subjected to the bishops, 134 

women excluded from, 403 

treatment of, in Reformation, 435 

English, their immorality, 451 

suppression of, by Wolsey, 448 

and by Henry VIII., 454 

means used for, 457 

financial results of, 460 

suppression of, in Austria, 584 

in France, 589 

in Spain, 608 

in Italy, 609 

in South America, 609 

Monastic habit, salvation ensured by, 335 

Monks, persecuted by the Iconoclasts, 90 

number of, in Coptic church, 93 

subjected to military service, 99 

wandering, described by Augustin,102 

and by St. Benedict, 110 

and by Smaragdus, 115 

political influence of, 106 

confined to their convents, 107 

their wives must become nuns, 114 

punishment of unchastity, 103, 131 

custom of letting blood, 138 

secular life of, in 10th century, 152 

as priests in Anglo-Saxon England, 174 

married priests replaced with, 275 

residence of, with nuns, in Spain, 305 

ordered to sleep singly, 332 

ridiculed by Von Hutten, 416 

fate of English, 460 

ejected.held to chastity, in England,469 

unfit to be confessors, 

432, 569, 572, 577, 587 

marriage of (see Marriage). 

Monluc of Valence, his marriage, 499 

his description of French clergy, 515 

Montanists denounce second marriages, 36 

Montariol, Abbey of, and droit de mar- 

quette, 354 



Monte Casino, foundation of, 111 

Carloman becomes a monk there, 133 

Abbey of, in 10th century, 153 

preservation of, in 1866, 609 

Monza, clerical marriage in 1152, 221 

Barnabite college at, case of, 621 

Morales, Ambrosio, case of, 40 

Morality, reformed by early Christians, 32 

of Puritanism, 357 

of Scottish Reformers, 509 

artificial standard of, 269, 347, 349, 627 

Morals, clerical, described by Cyprian, 41 

by Tertullian, 42 

reforms at Council of Nicaea, 54 

how affected by introduction of 

celibacy, 78 

as described by Salvianus, 81 

by Council of Elvira, 99 

by St. Jerome, 100 

of monks, described by St.Augustin,102 

by St. Benedict, 110 

by St. Isidor of Seville, 115 

by Smaragdus, 115 

of bishops in Merovingian France, 119 
of clergy in Gothic Spain, 121 

in Italy, in 8th century, 127 

in France, in 8th century, 128 

in 9th century, 136 

in Italy, in 10th century, 145, 147, 153 
in England, in 10th century, 167 

in 11th century, 172 

in monasteries, in 1 1th century, 188 
of bishops, in 11th century, 198 

of married clergy, in 11th century, 202 

in Milan, 210 

in Germany, in 12th century, 247 

in France, in 12th century, 264 

worse than laity, 265, 346, 

350, 429, 430, 518, 533, 586, 629 
in England, in 12th century, 281 

in 13th century, 293 

in Ireland, in 14th century, 299 

in Scotland, in 13th century, 301 

in Spain, in 14th century, 311 

in church of 12th century, 321, 326 

of 13th century, 331 

in monasteries in 14th century, 340 
in papal court, 341 

in mediaeval church, 350 

in military orders, 364 

in Bohemian church, 383 

in 15th century, 388 

in 16th century, 427,515-33 

in English church of 16th century, 447 
in English monasteries, 451 

of clergy of Bangor, 463 

in Scottish church, 501 sqq. 

in German church described by 

Cassander and Wicelius, 542-3 

after Council of Trent, 548 

in Rome, in 16th century, 549 

in post-Tridentine church of Italy, 

550-3 
in Bavaria and Bohemia, 554, 556 

in the Low Countries, 557 

in France, 559 

in confessional, 566-77 

affected by casuistry, 578 

in 18th century, 585-8 



INDEX. 



Morals of monachal educators, 619-21 
in the modern church, 624—37 
More, Sir Thomas, his position, 445 
appointed Chancellor, 449 
on sheep-farming, 474 
Morone, Cardinal, asked to aid in fur- 
thering clerical marriage, 541 
Morrison, Sir Richard, on resumption 

of church lands, 483 

Mortal sin, Wickliffe's definition of, 379 

Morton, Archbishop, his visitation, 399 

Mosaic Law, materialism of, 21 
Mothers, residence of, forbidden, 138, 331 

Mount Lebanon, Synod of, in 1736, 91 

Mozarabic ritual, contest over, 304 

Mucius, his blind obedience, 102 

Muhlberg, battle of, 441 
Mulieres subintroductae, forbidden by 

Council of Nicaea, 53 

allowed in modern times, 626 

Muncer and the Anabaptists, 438 

Munster, Council of, in 1279, 575 

in 1652, 558 

impossibility of reform.in 16th cent., 548 

proportion of clergy in, 631 

Mutilation, practice of, 40 

Mutiles de Aussie, sect of, 41 

Mylitta, 21 

Mynecena, 173 

Myrc, John, his Instructions, 400 

on confessor and penitent, 574 

Myrror of Justice on married clerks, 291 

Mystic rewards of virginity, 347 



NALANDA, Buddhist monastery of, 95 
Namur, Synods of, in 1604 and 1639,562 
in 1698, 576 

in 1742, 577 

Nanno of Verona protects married 

priests, 151 

Nantes, Council of, in 895, 138 

Edict of, 500 

Naples, children of ecclesiastics in, 335 
position of priests' concubines in, 339 
tax on concubines in, 399 

clerical marriage proposed in 18th 

century, 583 

numbers of clergy in, 588, 631 

civil marriage in, 606, 607 

restrictions on monachism in 1820, 609 

Council of, in 1576, 553 

in 1699, 574 

Napoleon I. reestablishes religion, 595 

prohibits clerical marriage, 597 

Napoleon III. favors monachism, 614, 617-8 

Narbonne, Council of, in 1551, 516 

in 1609, 560 

Nature, crimes against, 137, 332, 548 

Nausea, Frederic, on priestly marriage, 423 

Nazirate, the Jewish, 22 

Neocaesarea, Council of, in 314, 36, 51 

Neo-Platonism, influence of, 39 

Nestorians, the, 91, 92 

Netherlands, reception of Council of 

Trent, 547, 553 

troubles of, caused by clerical cor- 
ruption, 557 
restrictions on monachism. 609 



Neustria, reforms in, 132 

New Grenada, corruption of church in, 563 

abuse of confessional in, 572 

suppression of monasteries in, 609 

Nicaea, Council of, its relation to celibacy, 53 

celibacy attributed to, 555 

Nicaea, canon of, its enforcement, 84 

renewed by Greek church, 91 

enforced by Gregory I., 124 

enforcement attempted in 744, 132 

in 9th century, 136 

in England, in 12th century, 277 

by Council of Coyanza, in 1050, 303 

in Anglican church, 494 

applied to female relatives.138, 331, 628 

relaxation of, in 1 536 and 1548, 518, 525 

by Council of Trent, 538 

efforts to enforce, in 17th century, 561 

disregarded in modern times, 626 

Nicetas Pectoratus, his defence of 

Greek church, 191 

Nicholas deClemanges (see Clemanges). 

Nicholas I. enforces the rule of celibacy, 139 

his relaxation of the rules, 141 

on sacraments of sinful priests, 194 

Nicholas II., his election, 192 

his reforms, 194,197,199 

he intervenes in Milanese troubles, 213 

his canons on celibacy renewed, 227 

he enforces celibacy in France, 255 

his death, 200 

Nicholas III., his efforts with Greek 

church, 328 

Nicholas V., regulations of, 397 

Nicholas the deacon, 34 

Nicolites, heresy of, 34 

priestly marriage ascribed to, 191, 201 

married priests stigmatized as, 211 

abjuration of, in Milan, 214 

condemnation by C. of Piacenza, 221 

in Germany, in 12th century, 318 

Nigel of Ely, his revolt, 281 

Niklaushausen, Hans of, 405 

Nimptschen, escape of nuns from, 425 

Nismes, residence of relatives forbidden, 332 

Noailles, Cardinal, on absolution by 

guilty confessor, 576 

Nobla Leyczon, La, 373, 374 

Nomocanon of Photius, 87 

Norbert, St., reforms effected by, 265 

Nordhausen, Council of, in 1105, 244 

Norfolk, married priests ejected in, 480 
Norfolk, Duke of, suppresses the Pil- 
grimage of Grace, 456 
introduces the Six Articles, 467 
Normandy, condition of church in 10th 

century, 155 

enforcement of celibacy in 12th 
century, 268, 319 

North, Sir Edward, obtains the Char- 
ter-House, 451 
Northmen, effect of their incursions, 139 
Northumberland, Earl of, his insurrec- 
tion in 1569, 496 
Northumbrian priests, rules for, 168 
Norway, rights of illegitimates in, 197 
Nowell, Dean, on Council of Trent, 637 
Nucius, Nicander, on English monas- 
teries, 452, 458, 469 



670 



INDEX. 



Nullity of marriage in orders intro- 
duced in 1123, 313 
at Council of Trent, 536 
Nunneries, disorders of, under Carlo- 

vingians, 137 

in 10th century, 152 

in 12th century, 264, 282, 318 

„ in 13th century, 268 

in 14th century, 340 

in 15th century, 389, 393, 399 

in 16th century, 451, 526, 527 

abuse of confessional in, 572 

Nuns, shaving of head prohibited, 104 

punishment for unchastity, 131 

seduction of, a capital offence, 136 

their scandalous lives under Car- 

lovingians, 137 

test for their virtue, 292 

their residence with monks, in 

Spain, 305 

wives of monks must become, 324 

ordered to sleep singly, 332 

Lollard denunciations of them, 381 
apostate, claimed by the church, 424 
their emancipation, in the Ref- 
ormation, 425, 427, 435 
ejected, held to chastity in England, 469 
their numbers in England, 471 
married, divorce of, 480 
their corruption by confessors, 

523, 574, 586, 588 
their trial by Inquisition, 588 

secularized in Italy, 610 

marriage of (see Marriage). 
NUrnburg, Diet of, in 1522, 424, 431 

in 1523, 69, 413, 424 

secularization of Augustinians, 425 
friars deprived of superintendence 
of nuns, 432 

Nurses of priests' children, their posi- 
tion, 306 
Nursia, priest of, case of, 124 



OATH of Knight Templars, 362 

prescribed for French clergy, 589 
Obedience, monachal, nature of, 102 

Observances common to Catholicism 

and Buddhism, 35 

and Mazdeism, 44 

Odo of Canterbury, his indifference to 

celibacy, 166 

Odo of Toul on relaxation of discipline, 326 
Ogilby, Marion, 503 

Old Catholics, schism of, 604 

Olmutz, Synod of, in 1342, 338 

in 1413, 383 

in 1591, 555 

Oral Law, development of, 24 

burdens imposed by, 26 

Orange, Council of, in 441, 60, 76 

Ordeal, its use in ecclesiastical trials, 140 
Ordericus Vitalis, 156, 176 

Order of widows, apostolic, 96 

Orders, military, the, 362 

mendicant, the, 375 

Orders, religious, their abolition recom- 
mended, 523, 587 

unauthorized.suppressed in France,621 



Orders, holy, in Wickliffe's reforms, 379 

Ordination dissolves marriage, 313, 536 

indelible under Wickliffe, 379 

in modern France, 600-1 

minimum age for, 624 

sacrament of, attacked by Luther, 418 

superior to marriage, 314, 642 

Oriesis, St., rule of, 101 

Origen, asceticism condemned by, 33 

his self-mutilation, 40 

Origenism, influence of, 86 

Original sin, Council of Trent on, 640 

Orihuella, Council of, in 1600, 557, 562, 574 

Orleans, Council of, in 511, 80 

in 533, 60, 80 

in 538, 69, 80 

in 541 and 549, 80 

Ormanetto, Niccolo, his mission to 

Bavaria, 536 

Orthodox Brethren, the, 375, 385 

Orzechowski, Stanislas, case of, 540 

0.*ber, Council of, in 1062, 201 

Osbern, his life of St. Dunstan, 166 

Osiander on virginity of the Virgin, 69 
Osius of Cordova, influence of, 51 

Osnabruck, Synods of, in 1625, 1628, 

556, 558 
Osorius on marriage of military orders, 365 
Ossory, Council of, in 1320, 299 

Oswaid, St., his reforms, 169 

Oswalde's Law, charter of, 169 

Otfrid of Watten, his troubles, 260 

Othlonus, his temptations, 188 

Otho I. deposes John XII., 144 

condemns priestly marriage, 150 

on sons of priests, 229 

Otho IV., his league with John of Eng- 
land, 283 
Otho of Constance, case of, 229 
Otto of Ostia, his mission to Constance,229 
Otto, Cardinal, constitutions of, 288, 291 
Ottoboni, constitutions of, 291 
in Scotland, 301 
Oxford, Council of, in 1222, 288 
University of, on Wickliffe, 379 
reform proposed by, 394 
See of, created, 460 



PACCANARISTES, 
Pachomius, rule of, 
Paderborn, Synod of, in 1548, 

proportion of clergy in, 
Pagan priests, restrictions on, 



613 
101 

528 
631 
49-50 
Pafeario, Aonio, on Council of Trent, 520 
Palencia, Council of, in 1129, 308 

in 1388, 311 

Palermo, civil marriage valid in, 606 

Palestine, monachism introduced in, 97 
Panzini on condemnation of marriage, 47 
on the suppression of religious 

orders, 610 

on clerical morality, 632 

is condemned as a heretic, 602, 642 
Papacy, degradation of, in 10th cent., 144 
in 11th century, 176 

released from subjection, 192 

election limited to Roman clergy, 200 
distrust inspired by, 395 



INDEX. 



671 



Papacy, restrictions on it in England, 

417, 517 

opposition to it in England, 444 

supremacy abolished in England, 450 

restored in England, 482 

dependent on celibacy, 536 

Papal Court, its immorality, 341, 345 

its rapacity, 412, 416 

its repugnance for C. of Trent, 519,522 

it hesitates as to celibacy in 18th 

century, 584 

number of women in, 1882, 628 

Papal dispensations, their effect, 322, 397 

sale of, 321, 322, 345, 398, 5 1 6, 517, 522 

admitted by Council of Trent, 535, 642 

for married priests, 407, 442 

Papal infallibility in Vatican Council, 608 

Papalists known as Paterins, 237 

Paphnutius, story of, 56 

quoted in the Reformation, 419 

Paraguay, suppression of monasteries 

in, 609 

Parajika rules, in Buddhism, 94 

Paregorius, case of, 84 

Paris, Council of, in 615, 114 

in 1074, 256 

in 1212, 270, 332 

in 1323, 351 

in 1521 and 1528, 515 

Huguenot Synod of, in 1559, 498 

diocese of, absolution in, 576 

Parlement of, regulates monastic 

orders, 585 

Parker, Archbishop, his marriage, 472 

his rejoinder to Martin, 480 

his promotion, 487 

he obtains priestly marriage from 

Elizabeth, 488 

his visitation of 1567, 491 

he remonstrates with Elizabeth, 493 

he evades an extradition question, 513 

Parker, Mrs., Elizabeth's insolence to, 491 

Parkyns, his account of Abyssinian 

church, 93 

Parlement of Paris regulates monastic 

orders, 585 

Parliament (English) confirms suprem- 
acy of Henry VIII., 450 
enacts the Six Articles, 467 
modifies the Six Articles, 471 
legalizes priestly marriage, 473 
commands respect for it, 476 
reactionary measures under Mary, 478 
repeals the laws of Henry VIII., 482 
on confessional manuals, 634 
Parliament (Scotch) of 1542, 503 
of 1560, 506 
Parliamentary Abbots in 1539, 458 
Parma, trouble with married priests in, 222 
Partidas, Las Siete, marriage forbid- 
den in, 309 
Partner in guilt, absolution by, 575-8, 633 
Paschal II., his efforts to enforce celi- 
bacy, 244 
enforces celibacy in Denmark, 253 
in Britanny, 259 
in Flanders, 262 
in Spain, 305 
on ministration of married priests, 275 



Paschal II. on children of priests, 276 

Passau, enforcement of celibacy in, 230 d 

Council of, in 1284, 338 » 

troubles of, in 1431, 395 

Transaction of, 443 

Paterins, origin of the name, 211 

their heresy, 207 

their doctrines, 367 

German papalists so called, 237 

Patmore, Thomas, punishment of, 462 

Patra, the Buddha's begging-dish, 35 

Patrician heresv, 45 

Patrick, St., his classification of merit, 46 

founds Irish church, 159 

celibacy in his church, 76 

Synod of, in 672, 160 

Patronage, abuse of, France, 16th cent., 515 

Paul, St., his liberalizing views, 26 

his asceticism, 31 

he enjoins abstinence from women, 49 

on ministration of women, 60 

his order of widows, 96 

Paul III. prevents reconciliation with 

Lutherans, 441 

grants dispensations for married 

priests, 442 

excommunicates Henry VIIL, 455 
convokes Council of Trent, 520 

attempts a reform of the church, 

516, 522 
obliged to abandon it, 523 

Paul IV. pronounces Savonarola or- 
thodox, 386 
on English church-lands, 483 
on abuse of confessional, 568 
puts his own " Consilium " in the 
Index, 523 
Paul V. on abuse of confessional, 569 
Paul of Samosata, case of, 42 
Paul the Thebaean, the first anchorite, 97 
Paula, Francisco de, advocates clerical 

marriage, 602 

Pauline Christianity, 27 

Paupers, monastic vows taken only by, 168 
Pavia, Council of, in 1022, 178 

schismatic Synod of, in 1076, 219, 220 
Payne, Peter, 382 

Peasants' War, the, 435 

Peckham of Canterbury, efforts of, 291 
Pedro de Luna, legate to Spain, 310 

Pekin, number of Buddhist monks in, 95 
Pelagius I. endeavors to enforce the 

canons, 123 

separates wives of subdeacons, 124 

Pelagius II., his relaxation of rules, 122 

Penafiel, Council of, in 1302, 310 

Penance ot married priests under Mary, 481 

term of, for infraction of canons, 

80, 157, 160 
for unchastity, 169 

Penitential of Theodore on marriage, 48 
Penitentials, coarseness of, 566, 634 

Penitentiary, taxes of the, 428 

Pepin d'Heristel, policy of his house, 127 
Pepin-le-Bref reforms the clergy, 132 

his policy, 134 

Peres de la Foi, 613 

Perigord, Manichseism in, in 1147, 207 

Persecution of Manichseans, 43 



672 



INDEX, 



Persecution of monks by Leo the Isaurian,90 
by Valens, 99 

of married priests, 234, 423 

of Catholics in Scotland, 512 

of celibacy under the Terror, 593 

Perth, monasteries destroyed in, 508 

Peru, corruption of church of, 564-5 

Perushim, 25 

Peter, St., his view of Christ's mission, 26 
Peter d' A illy on corruption of priests, 350 

on nunneries, 389 

he condemns Men of Intelligence, 385 
Peter of Antioch, 107 

Peter Cantor on clerical morals, 265 

on false accusations, 369 

Peter of Capua, Cardinal, enforces celi- 
bacy in Poland, 251 
Peter, Cardinal, exhorted to suppress 

marriage, 203 

Peter Comestor deprecates celibacy, 325 
Peter Martyr, tumult in Oxford against, 474 

exhumation of his wife, 484 

Peter the Venerable, miracle related 

by, 266 

he refutes the Petrobrusians, 370 

Peter de Vinea on official venality, 284 
Peter Waldo, his career, 372 

Peterboro', the first bishop of, 454 

See of, created, 460 

Petrarch, his opinion of papal court, 342 
Petrobrusian heresy, 370 

Petronio, Marco, on clerical morality, 631 
Peutwitz, escape of nuns from, 425 

Peyrinnis, Laurent de, regulations of, 562 
Pfaffenkind, 336 

Pharisees, 25 

Philibert of Sedan on clerical marriage,594 
Philip of Burgundy, bishop of Utrecht, 429 
Philip of Savoy, his career, 290 

Philip II. prevents the granting of 

clerical marriage, 544 

his policy with regard to Council 
of Trent, 547, 553 

he supports St. Charles Borromeo, 551 
Philippe, frere, of the Ecoles Chre- 

tiennes, 617, 620 

Philo on Therapeutse, 26 

Phlebotomy of monks prohibited, 138 

Phoebe the deacon, 60 

Photinus, 39 

his heresy as to the Virgin, 68 

Physicians, prelates not to be, 227 

Piacenza, Bishop of, aids to elect 

Cadalus, 200 

Council of, in 1095, 221 

troubles in, 222 

Pibo of Toul inquires as to sacerdotal 

marriage, 243 

Picardi, 385 

Pictish church, character of, 160 

Piedmont, priestly marriage in, 202 

monastic orders suppressed in, 609 

number of clergy in, 630 

Pier-Leone, antipope, his character, 341 
Pierre de Bruys, 370 

Piers Ploughman, Vision of (see Lang- 

lande). 
Piers Ploughman, Creed of, 352 

on Franciscans, 376 



Pietro Igneo excommunicates married 

priests, 222 

Pietro, schismatic Bishop of Lucca, 222 
Pietro de Santa Maria enforces celi- 
bacy in Bohemia, 246 
Pignan, disorders of canons of, 573 
Pilgrimage of Grace, the, 455 
Pilgrims, female, dangers to, 164 
deterred from visiting Rome, 145 
Pinytus of Gnosus, his asceticism, 34 
Pisa, Council of, failure of its reforms, 413 
Pistoia, trouble with married priests in, 222 
state of convents of, 586 
Council of, in 1786, 587 
Pius II. on the origin of celibacy, 29 
he favors clerical marriage, 406 
he increases the annates of Mainz, 412 
Pius III. his Bull of Reformation, 523 
Pius IV. on the origin of celibacy, 29 
he admits the story of Paphnutius, 56 
he reconvokes the Council of Trent,521 
he temporizes with demand for 

clerical marriage, 531 

he swears his prelates to support 

vows of chastity, 533 

he approves his legates' tergiver- 
sation, 535 
he concedes the cup to German 

laity, 541 

his treatment of Orzechowski, 541 

he inclines to grant clerical mar- 
riage, 544 
but at length refuses, 545 
he orders reception of C. of Trent, 547 
on abuse of confessional, 568 
Pius V. admits that heresy is justified 

by clerical immorality, 430 

his accession, 547 

his reforms, 548-50 

he suppresses the Umiliati, 552 

his Bull Contra Sodomitas, 578 

is stigmatized as a Lutheran, 641 

Pius VI. on abuse of confessional, 578 

Pius VIII. offers to permit clerical 

marriage, 598 

Pius IX. on dissolution of priestly 

marriage, 317 

he resists clerical marriage, 60] 

his organization of the Vatican 

Council, 603 

he denounces civil marriage, 605 

growth of church under him, 608 

his policy on monastic vows, 610-11 
on absolution for solicitation, 633 

Podiebrads, the, of Bohemia, 384 

Poissy, Colloquy of, on virginity of 

the Virgin, 69 

its result, 559 

Poitiers, Council of, in 1000, 157 

in 1078, 256 

Huguenot Synod of, in 1560, 559 

Bishop of, on degradation of clergy, 638 

Poland, enforcement of celibacy in, 251 

its alliance with Bohemia, 384 

its complaints of papal exactions, 397 

clerical celibacy questioned in 15th 

century, 409 

clerical marriage demanded in 1556,529 
case of Orzechowski, 540 



INDEX. 



673 



Poland, reception of Council of Trent, 547 
celibacy discussed in 18th century, 584 
Pole, Cardinal, on need of reformation, 522 
his legatine powers, 478 

is installed as legate, 482 

he enforces celibacy, 483 

he orders exhumation of Peter 

Martyr's wife, 484 

he forbids withdrawal of married 

priests, 485 

his death, 486 

Political importance of celibacy, 201 

influence of married priests in 1061, 200 

of monachism, 106 

of Belgian clergy, 623 

teaching of monachism, 617-8 

Pollution of priests among the Jews, 22 

Polygamy of Jews and Christians, 38 

of priesthood, 172, 181, 247 

permitted by John of Leyden, 438 

Pomerania, clerical morals in 15th cent., 401 

Pomeranius on Luther's marriage, 425 

Pontanus on Alexander VI., 345 

Pontigny, Abbot of, punished, 404 

Poor Men of Lyons, 373 

Poor-laws, English, commencement of, 460 

Poor, relief of, in Scotland, 508 

Pope (see Papal). 

Pope, Simon, case of, 479 

Poppo of Brixen created pope, 187 

Popular desire for clerical celibacy, 77, 234 
invoked by the church, 227, 232 

Population, influence of celibacy on, 360 
Port of Spain, Council of, in 1854, 

626, 633 
Portalis promises clerical marriage 

under the Concordat, 596 

forbids it, 597 

Portugal, military orders in, 365 

abuse of confessional in, 569 

Poverty not required in primitive mo- 
nachism, 101, 112 
enforced in rule of Tetradius, 112 
in rule of military orders, 362 
of Irish church, 297 
of Scottish church, 508 
of Waldenses, 374 
of Franciscans, 376 
Poynette, Bishop, his writings, 473, 480 
Praemunire for recognizing papal au- 
thority, 456 
Pragmatic Sanction of 1438, 396 
Prague, enforcement of celibacy in, 246 
Univ. of, condemns Wickliffe, 382 
Councils of, in 1405-7, 383 
in 1565, 554, 556 
in 1860, 627, 633 
clerical marriage in 1578, 555 
Confession of Faith of 1432, 384 
Pratimoksha, the, 94 
Predestinarianism of Huss, 382 
Prelates not to be physicians, 227 
Prelibation, droit de, 354 
Premontre, order of, 264 
Priests, children of (see Children). 
divorces of (see Divorces). 
marriage of (see Marriage). 
immorality of (see Morals). 
forbidden to bear arms, in 1049, 1S9 



Priests compelled to keep concubines, 

310, 388, 389 
privileges of their concubines, 339 
reconciled, treatment of, in Eng- 
land, 484, 485 
their position, in French Revolu- 
tion, 590-2 
obliged to join in wolf-hunts, 303 
purgation of, in Saxon England, 174 
punishment of, for unohastity, 131 
responsible for parish property, 123 
their position in modern France, 637 
sinful, their ministrations, 

194, 368, 374, 379, 383 
their influence, 346 

mutually absolve each other, 428 
adulterous wives of, to be put away, 39 
their wives in Italy, in 8th century, 127 
disorders caused by, 147, 175 

stigmatized as concubines, 196 
reduced to slavery, 242 

assumed to be women in ser- 
vice, 489 
their resistance to celibacy, 

202,212,222, 228,231 
their power and privileges, 355 

they corrupt the laity. 265, 346, 

350, 429, 430, 518, 530, 533, 586, 629 
Priesthood, hereditary (see Hereditary). 
becomes indelible, in 12th century, 314 
is incompatible with medicine, 227 
Priestly caste, danger of creating, 225 

Primitive church, asceticism in, 31 

marriage permitted in, 28 

Privileges accorded to priests' concu- 
bines, 339 
Procedure, ecclesiastical, gives prac- 
tical immunity, 140 
Procopius, St., his marriage, 181 
Procopius the Hussite, 384 
Prodicns, heresy of, 33 
Promotion dependent on celibacy, 75, 76 
Property,church, threatened by priestly 

marriage, 123 

dilapidation, in 10th cent., 145, 147 

in France before 1789, 589 

Property, monastic, in England, 459 

confiscated in Germany, 434, 437, 439 

in France, 589 

in Italy, 609 

Prosecution of clerical offenders in 

France, 636 

Prostitution encouraged by celibacy, 629 
Prota, Dr., on civil marriage, 606 

Protection accorded to clerical crimi- 
nals, • 635 
Provence, Waldenses in, 375 
Prussia, foundation of kingdom of, 434 
acknowledges clerical marriage, 604 
proportion of clergy in, 630 
Prussia, West, morals of clergy, in 

15th century, 402 

Public school system of France, 623 

Punishment, mildness of,for solicitation, 571 
Purgation of Anglo-Saxon priests, 174 

of married priests, 277 

Purgatory maintained by Henry VIII., 454 
Puricelli on marriage of Eriberto of 

Milan, 209 



45 



674 



INDEX. 



Puricelli on Anibrosian tradition, 210 

Puritanism, influenoe of, 357 

Purity required of pagan priests, 49 



QUEBEC, Councils of, in 1851 and 
1854, 626, 633 
Quedlinburg, Diet of, in 1085, 239 
Quimper, diocese of, hereditary de- 
scent in, 259 
Quinisext in Trullo, 88 
Quito, Council of, in 1869, 627 



RADULPHUS Ardens on Manichaeisni,208 
on clerical morals, 265 

Rainbaldo of Fiesole, 180 

Ranald and Raymond, case of, 146 

Rapacity of papal court, 412, 416 

Rasfeldt, Bishop, his misadventures, 548 
Ratherius of Verona on hereditary 

transmission, 146 

his priests all married, 148 

his contest with his clergy, 150 

Ratisbon, Council of, in 13th century, 248 

in 1512, 429 

Assembly of, in 1524, 423 

Diet of, in 1532, 439 

in 1541, 440 

Bishop John of, 429 

Ratramnus of Corvey on Nicene canons, 55 

Rauscher, Cardinal, denounces civil 

marriage, 605 

Ravenna, Council of, in 967, condemns 

priestly marriage, 150 

in 997, 157 

in 1568, 553 

in 1855, 627 

Raymond of Gallicia, 307 

Raymond du Puy founds Knights of 

St. John, 362 

Recared I. enforces celibacy, 121 

Reconciliation of Imperialist clergy, 

in 1106, 245 

of Anglican clergy, 484, 485 

of England to Rome, 482 

Reformation, the, in Germany, 410-43 

caused by clerical corruption, 430, 514, 

516, 518, 527, 529, 548, 556 sqq. 

in England, 444-97 

in France, 498-500 

in Scotland, 501-13 

Reforms proposed at Constance, 391 

undertaken at Bale, 395 

attempted at Trent, 538 

Rtfractaires priests, 590 

Regency, Council of, in 1523, 424 

Reggio, trouble with married priests in, 222 

Reginald of Canterbury, his life of St. 

Malchus, 275 

Regino of Pruhm on residence of fe- 
male relatives, 138 
on legalized concubinage, 196 
Regnier the Albigensian, 367 
Relatives, residence of (see Residence). 
Relaxation for abuse of confessional, 569 
Relics, false, sold by monks, 102 
ridiculed by Erasmus, 414 
impostures of, in England, 458 



Renan, Ernest, on morality of clergy, 625 
Renaud of Rheims protects Flemish 

priests, 261 

Residence of relatives forbidden, 

138, 331, 555, 560 

its danger, 628 

of women, canon of Nicaea on, 53 

Emperor Honorius on, 55 

prohibition enforced, 84 

in Greek church, 91 

by Gregory I., 124 

forbidden, in 744, 132 

legislation on, 136 

tolerated in Spain, 303, 307, 309 

regulated in 1536, 518 

over forty years old permitted, 525 

permitted by Council of Trent,538 

regulations for, 554, 560, 561 

in Spanish colonies, 563 

modern rules for, 626, 628 

Resistance of clergy to celibacy, 

202, 212, 222, 228, 231 

Responsibility of the church, 355 

thrown upon God, 536, 624 

Restoration, monachism under the, 613 

Restrictions on monachism by Valens, 99 

by Majorian, 105 

in the East, 107 

in modern times, 608, 613, 621 

on clerical marriage by Elizabeth, 489 

Results of celibacy, 330 

Reuchlin and the theologians, 413 

Revolution, French, its treatment of 

the church, 588-94 

tolerates Sisters of Charity, 613 

of 1830, its influence on monachism,614 

Rhea, worship of, 50 

Rheims, Council of, in 874, 141 

in 1049, 189 

in 1119, 267 

in 1130, 314, 315 

in 1148, 315 

in 1408, 350 

in 1564, 559 

in 1583, 560 

in 1849, Q26 

Rhodes, Knights of, 362, 366, 458 

Ribadeneira, his life of Loyola, 517 

Ricci, Scipione dei, 587 

Richard of Albano appealed to, 261 

Richard of Dover on suppression of 

monasteries, 455, 456 

on starving out of monasteries, 457 

on false relics, 458 

intercedes for ejected monks, 460 

Richard the Fearless reforms Fecamp, 155 

Richard Fitz-Neal, his advancement, 281 

Richard of Marseilles, papal legate to 

Spain, 304 

Richmond, Thos., case of, 382 

Richstich Landrecht, children of clerks 

in, 336 

Riculfus of Soissons on incest, 138 

Ridley, Bishop, prepares the Forty-two 

Articles, 475 

Rigobert, St., of Rheims, 129 

Ritualists, Anglican, on marriage, 476 

Rivera on toleration of adultery, 566 

Robber Synod at Ephesus, 107 



INDEX 



675 



Robert d'Arbrissel, his reforms, 258, 265 
Robert of Artois, case of, 261 

Robert, Cardinal, his constitutions, 332 
Robert the Frisian enforces celibacy, 260 
Robert the Good (Naples) remits fines 

on concubinage, 339 

Robert the Hierosolymitan of Flanders, 261 
Robert the Pious, his neglect of celibacy ,179 
he burns heretics, 207 

Robert of Rouen, his character, 155 

Robles, his life of Ximenes, 403 

Roderic of Spain repeals Witiza's laws,122 
Rodolf of Bourges on residence of fe- 
male relatives, 138 
Rodolf of Swabia, his coronation at 

Mainz, 236 

Rodolphus Glaber on simony, 185 

Rodriguez on seduction in confessional,570 
Roman clergy, papal election by, 200 

Roman Law, concubinage under, 196 

Roman Republic, abrogation of mo- 
nastic vows in 1849, 609 
Rome, Council of, in 384, 64, 103 
in 721 and 722, 127 
in 745, 132 
in 826, 196 
in 1051, 189 
in 1052, 196 
in 1057, 192 
in 1059, 194 
in 1063, 196, 202 
in 1066, 216 
in 1074, 227 
in 1075, 231 
in 1076, 229, 232 
in 1079, 56 
in 1725, 626 
pseudo-council under Silvester, 55, 122 
avarice of, 397, 412 
brothels kept by prelates in, 429 
England reconciled to, 482 
Germany oppressed by, 412 
heretics forbidden in, 70 
its influence extended to Ireland, 296 
to Spain, 303 
jurisdiction of, its limits, 84 
its demoralizing effect,139, 322, 345 
surrendered by Alexander IV., 334 
morals of Pagan, 32 
of Christian, 81, 181, 341, 549, 587 
modern political opinions of, 618 
number of clergy in, 630 
pilgrims deterred from visiting, 145 
reforms of Pius V., 550 
revision of modern councils at, 628 
rule respecting the subdiaconate, 124 
supremacy over Milan asserted, 213 
toleration of attacks, 15th cent., 387,417 
of sacrilege and lust, 431 
of Greek discipline, 640 
Romuald the priest, case of, 127 
Romuald, St., 186 
Rosceline on priests' children, 276 
Rota, priest of, his fate, 236 
Rothius on the Nicolites, 34 
Rouen, Archbishops of, in 10th cent., 155 
Council of, in 1072, 256 
in 1148, 372 
in 1189, 322 



Rouen, Council of, in 1581, 500 

in 1850, 626, 633 

Roussillon, Edict of, in 1564, 499 

Rules of monachism, early, 101 

of St. Benedict, 112 

of St. Cassianus, 101, 110 

of St. Chrodegang, 134 

of St. Columba, 160 

of St. Oriesis, 101 

of St. Pachomius, 101 

of St. Tetradius, 112 

Rupert of Duits on priestly marriage, 247 

Ruremonde, Synod of, in 1570, 562 

Russel, Lord, suppresses insurrection 

in Devon, 475 

Russian church, customs of, 91 

Rusticus of Narbonne, 76 



CABATATI, 373 

^ Saccofori, 44 

Sacerdotalism, necessity of celibacy to, 225 

popular antagonism to, 368 

Sachsenspiegel, children of clerks in, 336 
Sacrament of marriage inferior to or- 
dination, 313, 315, 642 

of sinful priests, 194, 368, 374, 379, 383 
Sacrilege and lust, tolerance for, 431 

Sadducees, conservatism of, 24 

Sadoleto, Card., on need of reformation,522 
Saignet, his advocacy of clerical mar- 
riage, 353, 406 
St. Albans, Abbey of, its disorders, 399 
St. Caterina di Pistoia, Abbess of, 586 
St. Cornelius, church of, charter to, 270 
St. Denis, Council of, in 995, 154 

Abbey of, its disorders, 264 

St. Esprit, Society of, 613 

St. Fara, monastery of, its disorders, 264 
St. Gildas de Ruys, Abbey of, 264 

St. Iago of Compostella, church of, 306 

St. James of the Sword, Order of, 363 

St. John, Knights of, 362, 366, 458 

St. Louis, Council of, in 1858, 627 

St. Marco, preservation of, in 1866, 609 
St. Martin of Tours, Abbey of, 404 

St. Mary of Argenteuil, Convent of, 264 
St. Michael, Order of, 365 

St. Omer, Synod of, in 1099, 261 

in 1583, 560 

in 1640, 562 

St. Peter of Sens, Abbey of, 153 

St. Riquier, Abbey of, its strictness, 404 
St. Sabina, Cardinal of, enforces celi- 
bacy in Sweden, 253 
St. Stephen, church of, in Aretino, 147 
St. Ursmar, married canons of, 270 
St. Vitus, monks of, reformed by 

Gregory I., 114 

Saintes, monastic school at, case of, 619 
Saints in Benedictine Order, 113 

Salamanca, Council of, in 1335, 310 

Salerno, Council of, in 1596, 553 

Salona, Archbishop of, degraded, 188 

Salvianus on condition of morals, 81 

Salzburg, disorders in 12th century, 247 

Archbishop of, demands suppres- 
sion of clerical marriage, 530 
asks for clerical marriage, 589 



676 



INDEX. 



Salzburg, impossibility of reform, 16th 

century, 548, 554 

XXXth Council of, 350 

in 1537, 518 

in 1549, 527 

in 1562, 531 

Sampson, Thos., on position of mar- 
ried clergy, 496 
Samson, Nazirate of, 22 
Samuel, Nazirate of, 22 
Sanadon of Oleron on clerical marriage,594 
Sanders on Cranmer, 470, 474 

on delay in authorizing priestly 
marriage, 488 

on Elizabethan clergy, 494 

Sandys, Bishop, on delay of priestly 

marriage, 488 

his quarrel with Sir J. Bourne, 496 
Sanghadisesa rules, in Buddhism, 95 

Sangharamas, Buddhist, 94 

Sangreal, the, 35 

Sankhya school, 23 

Sannazaro on InnocentVIII. and Alex- 
ander VL, 345 
Sannyasis, class of, 23 
Sanseverino, Council of, in 1597, 553 
Santafe, Council of, in 1556, 563 
Saoshyans, the Zend Messiah, 35 
Sarabaitae, 107, 109, 115 
Saragossa, Council of, in 381, 98, 100 

in 592, 80 

Sarah, Abbess, her fortitude, 188 

Sardinia, civil marriage enacted, 605 

suppression of monasteries, 609 

Sarpi, Pra Paolo, on Tridentine points 

of faith, 641 

Satan, his estimate of chastity, 348 

his gratitude to the church, 351 

venerated by Begghards, 377 

Saturnilus, heresy of, 33 

Saurin vs. Starr and Kennedy, 611 

Savonarola, 386 

on priestly morals, 399 

on morals of nunneries, 403 

on abuse of confessional, 567 

Savoy, priestly marriage in, 203 

in the Revolution, 592 

Saxon bishops ejected by Normans, 271 

married priests in Ireland, 298 

(See, also, Anglo-Saxon.) 
Saxony, commencement of priestly 

marriage in, 419 

Sbinco of Prague, his reforms, 383 

Scandal more dreaded than sin, 518, 565, 

567, 568, 571, 577, 579, 619, 628, 634-5 
Scandals of agapetee, 41 

Scandinavia, morals of bishops, 389 

Scania, demand for priestly marriage in, 252 
Scaren, plunder of bishopric of, 279 

Schening, Council of, in 1548, 253 

Schism of 1061, influence of celibacy on, 200 
Schmalkalden, League of, its founding, 438 

its overthrow, 441 

its negotiations with Henry VIII., 466 
Schmidt, Conrad, his heresy, 385 

Schmidt, Johann, Bishop of Vienna, 439 
School system, public, in France, 623 

Schools of monastic orders in France, 

617-21 



Scotland, its church, founded by Co- 

lumba, 160 
claim of York on, 161 
celibacy in early church of, 161 
position of concubines in, 197 
enforcement of celibacy in, 299 
Council of, in 1225, 301 
the Reformation in, 501-13 
Scribes, their influence, 24 
Scythianus, precursor of Manes, 44 
Sebastian of Portugal on papal dis- 
pensations, 517 
Second marriages (see Marriage). 
Secular power invoked to regulate mo- 

nachism, 100 

protects married priests, 151, 152 
its assistance invoked, 

178, 203, 293, 294, 309, 559, 560 

celibacy subject to, 583 
Secularization of church property in 

Germany, 427, 435, 437 
in England, 454-60 
in France, 589 
in Italy, 609 
of education in France, 623 
Seduction of nuns a capital offence, 136 
Segenfrid of Le Mans, evil courses of, 152 
Sendomir, Agreement of, 385 
Sens, Council of, in 1850, 626 
Seraphin of Gran on marriage, 249 
Sergius III., his immorality, 144 
Serfs, ordination of, 155 
Servant, priest's wife assumed to be a, 489 
Servitude of sons of priests, 155 
of their wives, 189, 242, 309 
Severus repeals Majorian's laws, 106 
Seville, Council of, in 590, 80 
in 1512, 400 
dress of concubines regulated, 517 
abuse of confessional in, 569 
Sextus Philosophus on mutilation, 40 
Shaving, resistance of clergy to, 553 
Shaxton, Bishop, opposes the Six Ar- 
ticles, 469 
Sheep-farming, discontent caused by, 474 
Shrewsbury, hereditary benefices in, 272 
Sicily, monachism reformed by Greg- 
ory I., 114 
celibacy of subdeacons, 124 
children of ecclesiastics in, 335 
civil marriage valid, 606 
episcopal convention of, in 1850, 626 
Sickingen, Franz von, 421 
Siedeler, Jacob, fate of, 419 
Siegfrid of Mainz, his troubles with 

celibacy, 231 

Siete Partidas on origin of celibacy, 29 

celibacy enjoined in, 309 
Sigismund (Einp.) advocates clerical 

marriage, 406 
Silesia, heresy of John of Pirna, 378 
marriage in post-Tridentine church, 555 
clerical marriage asked for in 1831, 601 
Silvester I. on abuse of confession, 567 
forged canons of, 122, 137 
Silvester II. on celibacy, 157 
Silvester III., election of, 183 
Simon, Jules, opposes secularized edu- 
cation, 623 



INDEX 



677 



Simoniacal priests, sacraments of, 195 

Simony, in 11th century, 185, 214 

its repression by Leo IX., 189 

by Gregory VII., 229 

papal, 398 

Simple vows prevent marriage, 321 

Simplicius, St., of Autun, case of, 78 

Sin (see Scandal). 

its influence on sacraments, 194 

WickliftVs definition of, 379 

Siricius makes no reference to Nicene 

canon, 55 

commands celibacy, 65, 72 

on heresy of Bonosus, 68 

of Jovinian, 69 

on disregard of vows, 100 

on monastic unchastity, 103 

Sister, residence of (see Residence). 

Sisters of Charity, 612-3 

Sithieu, Abbey of, its strictness, 404 

Sitten, Synod of, in 1500, 402 

Six Articles (see Articles). 

Sixtus III. on marriage, 47 

his trial, 82 

Sixtus IV., his vices, 344 

his sale of preferments, 398 

Sixtus V. on children of cardinals, 550 

Skopsis, sect of, 41 

Slave children of priests emancipated, 563 

Slavery for wives of priests, 189, 242, 389 

for their sons, 155 

Slaves, female, their union with priests,249 

Slavonic church, its connection with 

the Greek, 244 

adherence to priestly marriage, 251 
Sleidan on organized concubinage, 353 
Sleswick, clerical morals in 15th cent., 402 
Smaragdus on monastic impostors, 115 

Smith, Dr. Richard, on clerical matri- 
mony, 474 
Smith, Sir Thomas, on celibacy, 497 
Socrates on the story of Paphnutius, 56 
on observance of celibacy, 86 
Soissons, Synod of, in 744, 132 
Manichseism in 1114, 207 
Solicitation (see Confessional). 
Somerset the Protector encourages the 

reformers, 472 

Sons of priests (see Children). 
Sorbonne, the, condemns Hildebran- 

dine doctrine, 382 

condemns Jean Lallier, 408 

refuses conference with Melanch 

thon, 440 

Sormitz, escape of nuns from, 425 

Sousa, Ant. de, on solicitation, 571 

Sozomen relates the story of Paphnutius, 56 

Spain, celibacy first enforced in, 50, 66 

disregarded in 375, 65 

legislation in 400, 75 

continued efforts required, 80 

morals of, in 4th century, 81 

monasticism in 7th century, 115 

celibacy in Arian church, 120 

reforms attempted by Catholicism, 121 

church property guarded, 123 

concubines, position of, 196, 197 

enforcement of celibacy in, 302 

priestly marriage universal, 303 



Spain, delay in abrogating priestly 

marriage, 305 

immorality of clergy, 311 

military orders, 363 

demoralization in 15th century, 400 
Ximenes and the Franciscans, 402 
morals in 16th century, 517 

priestly marriage demanded, 556 

concubinage ot ecclesiastics, 557 

the Colonial church, 563 

abuse of confessional, 568-74 

case of Father Mena, 579 

census of the church in 1764, 588 

civil marriage agitated, 605 

Spalatin, his record of priestly mar- 
riages, 422 
Spalatro, Council of, in 925, 149 
in 1185, 250 
Spaldwick, Vicar of, scandal caused by,485 
Spandel, Chris., on corruption of clergy, 556 
Spanish church, its independence of 

Rome, 302 

colonies, corruption of church in, 563 
Spelman on Anglo-Saxon monachism, 173 
Spifame, Bishop of Nevers, 499 

Spiti, number of monks in, 95 

Spots wood claims extradition of 

Baron's wife, 513 

Sraddha, 23 

Standards of morality, 269, 347, 349, 627 
State, permission of the, required by 

monastic orders in 1760, 585 

its subjection to the church, 618, 639 

Statistics of abuse of confessional, 573, 636 

of Buddhist monachism, 95 

of clergy in France, 593, 637 

in Germany, 630-1 

in Italy, 630 

in Naples, 631 

of Company of Jesus, 615 

of monachism in Austria, 615 

in Belgium, 615 

in France, 614, 615, 617 

Stephen IX. forces episcopate on Da- 

miani, 186 

his efforts at reform, 192 

intervenes in Milanese troubles, 212 
Stephen, King (England), his siege of 

Devizes, 281 

Stephen of Halberstadt on the Im- 
perialists, 239 
Sterckx, Archbishop, his " Petronilla," 629 
Stipends of married priests guaranteed,594 
Stokesley of London on suppression of 

monasteries, 454 

on priestly marriage, 462 

Storck and the Anabaptists, 438 

Strassburg, popular protection of mar- 
ried priests, 423 
Synod of, in 1549, 528 
in 1687, 562 
Strype, his description of English 

clergy, 476 

Sturmius, Bait., his marriage, 421 

Subdeacons allowed to marry, 39 

their marriage forbidden in 530, 86 
separated from their wives, 124 

marriage of, forbidden in 952, 149 

subjected to the canon, 196, 204 



678 



INDEX. 



Subdeacons, when married, removed 

from benefice, 242 

their celibacy in Dalmatia, 250 

their marriage in Hungary, 250 

and in Austria, 1267, 251 

their celibacy in Denmark, 253 

rules in England, 274 

exceptions in favor of immorality, 320 
their marriage permitted, 324 

Suchuen, abuse of confessional in, 578 

Suczinsky, Dean, his marriage, 604 

Suffolk, Duke of, suppresses insurrec- 
tion, ^ 455 
Suger of St. Denis imprisons Eon de 

1'Etoile, 372 

Suidger of Bamberg created pope, 184 

Sulpicius Severus, St., favors Vigilantius,71 
Sulpitius of Bourges, 118 

Suppression of monasteries in Ger- 
many, 427, 435 
in England, 448, 454 
means adopted for, 457 
financial results of, 460 
by Joseph II., 584 
in France, 589 
in recent times, 608-9 
Suzor of Tours on clerical marriage, 594 | 
Swabia, enforcement of celibacy in, 233 
Sweden, position of concubines in, 197 
enforcement of celibacy in, 252 
Englishmen as bishops, 278 
morals of bishops, 389 
Swithin, St., marriage of, 165 
Switzerland, celibacy at Constance, 229 
clerical morals of, 13th century, 340 
organized concubinage in, 353 
Zwingli's movement, 421 
demoralization in 16th century, 429 
clerical marriage in modern times, 601 
Syllabus of 1864 on dissolution of mar- 
riage, 317 
its political teachings, 618 
argued away by Dupanloup, 642 
Symmachus prohibits marriage of nuns, 111 
on confessors and penitents, 567 
Synesius, case of, 85 



TAAS, Hussite victory of, 382 

Taborites, the, 383 

Tacitus on morality of Germans, 118 

Taillard on origin of celibacy, 30 

Talasius of Angers on celibacy, 79 

Talesperianus of Lucca, charter of, 127 
Talleyrand secularizes church property, 589 
Talon, Omer, on marriage of apostates, 501 
Tamar and Judah, 21 

Tanner, Dr., on number of ejected 

priests, 480 

Tapas, character of, 24 

Tarento, Archb. of, advocates marriage, 631 
Tarragona, Council of, in 516, 80 

in 1591, 562 

in 1717, 626 

Tatianus, heresy of, 33 

Taxes of the Penitentiary, 428, 517 

Teachers, character of monastic, 618 

Teaching, political, of monachism, 618 
Tedaldo, Archbishop of Milan, 219 



Templars, military order of, 362 

Temporal possessions (see Secularization). 
Temporalities of church endangered by 

marriage, 63, 407 

of married clerks, seizure of, 258 

Tenure of chastity, benefices held by, 311 
Terbinthus, teacher of Manes, 44 

Terouane, marriage of priests in, 262 

Terror, the, position of priests under, 590 
persecution of celibacy, 593 

Sisters of Charity tolerated, 613 

Tertullian denounces second marriages, 36 
on virginity of the Virgin, 68 

on merits of widows and virgins, 96 
on accusations against Christians, 208 
Test, clerical marriage as a, 592 

Tetradius, St., Rule of, 112 

Tetzel, sale of indulgences by, 413 

Teutonic Knights, order of, 366 

marriage of, 434 

tribes, virtue of, 82 

Thane-right, 173 

Theatricals in nunneries, 527 

Theocracy proposed by Gregory VII., 223 
Theodatus of Corvey, success of, 227 

Theodore of Canterbury, his peniten- 
tial, 48, 162 
on sacrament of sinful priests, 195 
Theodore Studita on monastic morals, 109 
Theodoric of Verdun, his remonstrances,233 
Theodoric a Niem on John XXII., 344 
on Swedish bishops, 389 
Theodosius the Great suppresses po- 
lygamy, 38 
prohibits shaving of nuns, 104 
restricts monachism, 108 
Theodosius of Jerusalem, 107 
Theodulf of Orleans on incest, 138 
Theodwin and Albert at Council of 

Avranches, 319 

Theophilus of Alexandria, rigor of, 349 
Theophylact on " unius uxoris vir," 38 
Therapeutaj, 26 

Thessalonica, celibacy enforced in, 86 

Thibaut of Oxford on priests' children, 276 
Thomas Aquinas (see Aquinas). 
Thomas a Becket on simony, 284 

Thomas of Cantinpre' on corrupting in- 
fluence of priesthood, 350 
Thomas of Walden on Wickliffe, 379 
Thomas, Wm., on English monasteries, 452 
de Thou, on refusal to grant clerical 

marriage, 544 

Thuringia, the Brethren of the Cross, 385 

Thurles, Council of, in 1850, 626, 633 

Tibet number of monks in, 95 

Tibullus on purity required for sacrifice, 49 

Timotheists, their heresy, 376 

Tithes, seizure of, by the laity, 258 

Toledo, Council of, in 398, ' 196, 566 

in 400, 75, 105 

in 531, 80 

in 589, 80, 120 

in 597 and 633, 80 

in 653, 80, 121 

in 655, 121 

in 675, 80 

in 1565 and 1582, 562, 574 

discipline of, in Spanish church, 302 



INDEX 



679 



Toleration of attacks by Rome, 386, 415, 417 
Toleration, condemned by the church, 618 
Tonsure, differences as to, 161, 163 

Toribio, St., of Peru, 564 

Tome of Bourges, his marriage, 591 

Tortosa, Council of, in 1429, 311, 364 

Torture not allowed in trials for solici- 
tation, 571 
Toul, hereditary transmission in, 266 
relaxation of discipline in, 326 
Toulouse, Council of, in 1056, 255, 304 
in 1119, 208, 267 
in 1850, 626, 633 
spread of heresy in, 207, 370 
Tournay, Synod of, in 1520, 575 
in 1574, 560 
Tournon, Cardinal, his efforts at reform, 515 
Tours, Council of, in 460, 80 
in 567, 80, 120 
in 925, 146 
in 1060, 198, 255 
in 1096, 263 
in 1163, 319 
in 1583, 560 
in 1849, 626 
Trani, married bishop deposed, 197 
civil marriage valid in, 606 
Transaction of Cadam, 439 
of Passau, 443 
Transsubstantiation, Wickliffe's error 

on, 378 

Treason, English monks punished for, 

451, 457 
Treglia, Andrea, case of, 606 

Treguier, residence of relatives for- 
bidden, 332 
Trent, Council of, 514-45 
expectations with regard to it, 441, 443 
it authorizes dispensations for mar- 
ried priests, 442 
its canons on matrimony, 534-6 
on adultery, 566 
its non-reception in France, 546 
its reception elsewhere, 547 
failure of its reforms, 548 sqq. 
enforcement of its canons, 552, 553, 554 
it avoids reference to abuse of con- 
fessional, 568 
on power of absolution, 575 
on age of ordination, 624 
on gift of chastity, 624 
on residence of women, 626, 628 
on celibacy as matter of faith, 640 
Treves, persecution of married clergy in, 234 
morals of clergy, in 12th century, 248 
Archbp., asks for clerical marriage, 539 
effort for clerical marriage, in 1833, 601 
proportion of clergy in, 631 
Synod of, in 1548, 525 
in 1549, 526 
in 1678, 562 
Trialogus, Wickliffe's, 380 
Tribunal, mixed, for married priests, 257 
Tribur, assembly of, in 1076, 237 
Trinidad and Mercede, Orders of, 311 
Trithemius on Benedictine saints, 113 
on monastic immorality, 404 
Tropea, sister of Pier-Leone, 342 
Trosley, Council of, in 909, 141 



Troyes, Synod of, in 1107, 245 

in 1128, 362 

Tsadukim, hereditary priesthood of, 22 
their conservatism, 24 

Tuam, Council of, in 1854, 633 

Tudeschi, Nich., advocates clerical 

marriage, 406 

Turin, Council of, in 401, 75 

Turner, John, penance of, 481 

Turquoing, suppression of unauthor- 
ized orders in, 622 
Tuscany, priestly marriage defended in, 199 
clerical morals in 18th century, 586 
Tyndale advocates priestly marriage, 462 



U 



LBJC, St., of Augsburg on priestly 
marriage, 149 

Ulric of Bohemia founds Abbey of 

Zagow, 181 

Ulric of Tegernsee On bigamy, 181 

Umbilieani, 24 

Umiliati, their struggle with St. Charles 

Borromeo, 551 

Unchastity, forgiveness for, in False 

Decretals, 136 

punished as homicide, 169 

United States, priestly marriage in, 607 

morality of clergy in, 625 

recent Councils of, 626-7, 633 

University Fellows, celibacy of, 492 

Urban II. on sacraments of sinful 

priests, 195 

creates Conrad King of Lombardy,220 
reconciles the Milanese clergy, 220 
holds Council of Piacenza, 221 

enforcement of celibacy attributed 

to, 225 

not recognized in Germany, 241 

his enforcement of celibacy, 242 

protects Flemish priests, 261 

declares marriage incompatible 
with Orders, 313 

Urban III. enforces celibacy in Dal- 

matia, 250 

Urban VIII. on abuse of confessional, 573 
Urbicus of Clermont, case of, 73 

Urbino, Council of, in 1569, 553 

in 1859, 627 

Urraca, Queen, 306 

Useria, supposed wife of Eriberto of 

Milan, 209 

Utopia, Sir Thomas More's, 446 

Utraquists, the, 384 

Utrecht, condition of nunneries, 14th 

century, 340 

reception of Council of Trent in, 553 

Synods of, in 1561 and 1565, 554 

in 1865, 627, 633 



yAGABOND monks, 102, 109, 115 

' Vagabondage, Tudor laws on, 455, 460 
Valence, Council of, in 374, 100, 103 

Valencia, Council of, in 1255, 309 

in 1565, 562 

Valens, his restrictions on monachism, 99 
Valentinian on clerical morals, 63 

Valentinus, heresy of, 33 



680 



INDEX. 



Valesians, sect of, 40 

Valladolid, Council of, in 1322, 310, 364 
Vallombrosa, monks of, 183 

Vanaprasthas, class of, 23 

Varabran I. persecutes Manichasism, 43 
Vatican, Council of, in 1870, 603 

its decree of infallibility, 608 

number of women in, 1882, 628 

Vaudois, the, 373 

Vedas, doctrine of Tapas in, 24 

Vega, Fray Juan de la, 572 

Veil, taking the, a marriage with Christ, 104 
Velda, Dr., case of, 570 

Venality of officials, 253, 278, 284, 293, 312, 

321, 327, 332, 337, 339, 345, 396, 401, 
433, 517, 522 
Venantius of Syracuse, case of, 113 

Venezuela, suppression of monasteries 

in, 609 

Venice, relaxation of the canon in, 205 

number of priests in, 588 

Council of, in 1859, 627 

Vercelli, troubles of married priests in, 152 
Verdun, reform of monks of, 264 

Veringen, Count of, case of, 235 

Verneuil, Synod of, in 755, 134 

Vernon, Council of, in 845, 139 

Verona, trouble with married priests, 151 
Vertfeuil, extent of heresy in, 370 

Vestal Virgins, 50 

Vestments, monastic, salvation ensured 

by, 335 

Veuillot, Louis, on droit de marquette, 355 
Vicenza, Council of Trent transferred 

to, 520 

Victimes de l'Amour de Dieu, 613 

Victor II., his efforts at reform, 191 

enforces celibacy in France, 255 

Victor III. on Italian church, 180 

Victricius opposes Vigilantius, 71 

Vienna, Council of, in 1267, 251 

in 1858, 627, 633 

Vienne, Council of, in 1060, 198 

in 1311, 376 

Vigilantius, his resistance to celibacy, 70 
Vihara, Buddhist monastery, 94 

Villa, father, of Monza, 621 

Villiers, Abbe, defends celibacy, 582 

Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, 366 

Vincent, St., de Paul, 612 

Vintimiglia, Nunzio, his negotiations 

with Maximilian II., 543 

Virgil, Polydor, on celibacy in England, 273 
Virgin Mary, heresies concerning, 68 

her message to Gregory VII., 226 

Virginal, Cure of, his opinions, 623 

Virginity, extravagant praises of, 

45, 347, 349 
by Chrysostom, 86 

importance attributed to, 98 

by the Fraticelli, 377 

by Wickliffe, 380 

compared with marriage, 

46, 47, 96, 318, 347 

superiority of, a Tridentine dogma 
of morals, 536, 641 

St. Jerome on its rarity, 624 

perpetual, of the Virgin, 68 

vows of (see Vows). 



Virgins, priests to marry none but, 38 

number of, in early church, 98 

professed (see Nuns). 
Visconti, Nunzio, on marriage at Trent, 535 
Visitation of monasteries by Arch- 
bishop Morton, 399 
by Archbishop Warham, 447 
ordered by Henry VIII., 451 
its effect, 453 
Vitalis of Mortain preaches reform, 258 
Vitry, Jacques de, case of, 398 
Vladislas II. on clerical immorality, 401 
Vows of chastity, introduction of, 41 
not favored in early church, 48 
their temporary character, 41, 97 
their increasing permanency, 105 
rendered irrevocable by Gregory I., 113 
infanticide caused by them, 100 
are ordered for subdeacons, 124 
their perversion, 127 
made a prerequisite to holy orders, 179 
work dissolution of marriage, 313 
difference between simple and 

formal, 321 

are denounced by Lollards, 381 

by Luther, 421 

are maintained in the Six Articles, 469 

prelates at Trent sworn to support 

them, 533 

their observance a point of faith, 641 

papal dispensation for, 535, 642 

never granted by Pius IX., 611 

minimum age for, defined by 

Pius IX., 611 

limited to five years in France, 613 
Vows, monastic, rendered indissoluble 

in the East, 107 

of the military orders, 362 

Vrie, Theodoric, on clerical immorality, 389 



WAHU, Dr., on monastic schools, 619 
'' on cases of clerical prosecution, 636 

Wake, Archbishop, his correspondence 

with Du Pin, 582 

"Waldemar II. on concubines, 197 

Walden. Abbot of, his marriage, 463 

Waldo, Peter, 372 

Waldenses, the, 373 

Waldesk, Count of, his treatment of 

monks, 435 

Wales, celibacy in early church, 163 

state of church in 9th century, 171 

priestly marriage in 13th century, 285 
its persistence, 294 

Walter of Orleans on residence of fe- 
male relatives, 138 
Warham, Archbishop, his visitation, 447 
Wartburg, Luther's confinement in, 419 
Watten, Priory of, its troubles, 260 
Wealth of church, its growth, 63 
Wedlock (see Marriage). 
Wenceslas of Bohemia, his reforms, 383 
Wendt, Rev. Mr., case of, 636 
Wer-gild of priest, 173 

of children of clerks, 336 

Western monachism, character of, 109, 112 
Westminister, Council of, in 1127, 280 

in 1138, 281 



INDEX. 



681 



Westminster, Council of, in 1852, 
short-lived bishopric of, 
canons of, ejected, 
Westmoreland, Earl of, his insurrec- 
tion in 1569, 
Weston, Dr., story of, 
Wexford, married priests of, 
Whitby, Synod of, in 664, 
Wiburn, Percival, on marriage of An- 
glican clergy, 
Wicelius, George, on clerical marriage, 
Wickliffe on sacraments of sinful priests, 

his reforms, 
Widowhood, vows of, license caused by, 
Widows, priests not to marry, 

order of, in early church, 42j 

comparison of, with virgins, 46, 96, 
professed, marriage of, 
Wied, Hermann von, his attemps at 

reform, 
Wiesbaden, clerical marriage in 1821, 
Wilfreda, St., 

William of Bavaria on church corrup- 
tion, 
William of Cantilupe enforces celibacy, 
William of Cologne forbids marriage 

of monks, 
William the Conqueror enforces celi- 
bacy in Normandy, 
permits marriage in Britanny, 
neglects reform in England, 
William of Hilderniss, 
William the Lion on concubines, 

persecutes the clergy, 
William of Malmesbury on Anglo- 
Saxon church, 
William of Paderborn, his failure to 

reform, 
William of Sabina, legate to Spain, 
William of Strassburg excommuni- 
cates married priests, 
Willibrod, St., his labors, 
Wills, ecclesiastical, providing for chil- 
dren, 
Winchester, reform of monastery of, 

168, 
Council of, in 1070, 
in 1076, 
in 1139, 
hereditary transmission in, 
Windsor, Synod of, in 1070, 
Wine of Eucharist in early church, 

abstinence from, not recommended 
Wishart, George, his trial, 
Wisigothic laws on clerical celibacy, 

on church property, 
Wisigoths of Spain, state of church 

under, 
Witgar of Mendlesham, 
Witiza, his licentious laws, 
Witnesses, use of ordeal for, 

married priests not admitted as, 
four required to prove solicitation, 
Wittenberg, books of canon law 
burned at, 
Synod of, in 1522, 
Wives, demerit of, 

adulterous, to be put away, 
of Huguenot pastors, 



626 
460 
479 

496 
477 
298 
161 

495 
542 
196 
378 
127 
39 
, 96 
347 
110 

518 
601 
167 

527 

288 



- 340 

257 
259 
271 
385 
197 
301 

176 

340 
310 

424 
126 

337 

169 

272 
273 
371 



272 
44 
, 48 
510 
121 
123 

120 
282 
121 
140 
294 
571 

418 

420 

46 

39 

498 



Wives of Anglican clergy, their posi- 
tion, 496 
of bishops, their retention, 85, 88 
to be separated, 89 
under the Franks, 119 
in Gothic Spain, 121 
they rank as countesses, 259 
their position in Anglican 
church, 495 
consent of, requisite for episcopate, 249 
for diaconate, 250, 251 
for monastic vows, 324 
of monks to become nuns, 114, 205, 324 
of priests, their cohabitation per- 
mitted, 28, 48 
forbidden by Council of Elvira, 50 
permitted by Councils of 

Ancyra and Neocsesarea, 51 
and by Council of Nicsea, 53, 54 
and through the 4th cen- 
tury, 55, 58, 61, 79 
forbidden by Damasus, 64 
and by Siricius, 65 
forbidden in Gaul and Spain, 75 
and in Africa, 73 
permitted in the East, 86, 89 
custom in modern Russia, 91 
their position under the Franks,120 
legislation in Gothic Spain, 121 
are to be treated as sisters, 124 
in Italy, in 8th century, 127 
they cause dilapidation of 

property, 147 

Anglo-Saxon denunciation of, 175 
are stigmatized as concubines, 196 
their fidelity, 202 

their sufferings, 235 

are declared slaves of church, 189 
are reduced to slavery, 242, 309 
their seizure threatened, 261 

treatment of, in England, 

274, 277, 287 
they assist at altar in Germany, 318 
are liable to death under the 

Six Articles, 468 

legislation under Queen Mary, 485 

are assumed to be serving 

women, 

of subdeacons to be separated, 

Wolff, Christian, on Paphnutius, 

on Council of Trent, 
Wolfgang of Ratisbon exhorts to chas- 
tity, 
Wolf-hunts, priests obliged to join in, 
Wolsey, Cardinal, attacks monastic 
orders, 
his fall, 
Women, abstinence from, in pagan 
priesthood 



485 
124 

57 
840 

152 

303 

447 
449 

49 



not admitted in temple of Hercules, 50 



admitted to monasteries, 
their exclusion from monasteries, 
their ministration forbidden, 
their teaching forbidden, 
discredited as witnesses, 
rules for, in visiting bishops, 
residence of (see Residence). 
Wood, T., on position of Anglican 
clergy, 



101 
403 
60 
60 
571 
119 



m 



46 



6S2 



IfrDJBX.. 



Worcester, reformation of monks in, 169 

Chapter of, disorders of, 491 

Works, merits of, in Catholicism, 115 

in Calvinism, 498 

justification by, in Scotland, 506 

in Knox's confession, 512 

Worms, Diet of, in 1076, 234 

Wurtzburg, Council of, in 1446, 377 

in 1548, 528 

character of clergy, in 1521, 431 

clerical marriage in, 555 

Wu-Tsung, his persecution of Buddhism.95 

Wyatt's rebellion, suppression of, 478 



VIMENES reforms the Franciscans, 



402 



TOGA system, asceticism of, 23 

York, its claim on Scottish church, 161 
Council of, in 1195, 288 

Wolsey's reformation at, 447 



York, married priests ejected in, 480 

Ypres, Synod of, in 1629, 562 

abuse of confessional in 1768, 577 
Yves of Chartres (see Ivo). 



7ABARELLA, Cardinal, advocates 

" clerical marriage, 406 

Zabolcs, Synod of, in 1092, 248 

Zaccaria on origin of celibacy, 29 

on the Nicene canon, 55 

on Gregory of Nazianzum, 58 

on dissolution of priestly marriage, 317 

his defence of celibacy, 583-4 

Zachary, Pope, on Frankish church, 130 

on Saxon church, 164 

Zaga Zabo, his account of Coptic church, 93 

Zagow, Abbey of, foundation of, 181 

Zurich, priests of, defend their women, 340 

Z willing, Gabriel, preaches against mo- 

nasticism, 421 

Zwingli demands priestly marriage, 421 



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